
Class _ 

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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



A HISTORY OF THE 
UNITED STATES 

CECIL CHESTERTON 



A HISTORY OF THE 
UNITED STATES 

BY 

CECIL CHESTERTON 

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 

GILBERT K. CHESTERTON 




NEW XSJr YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 









Copyright, 1919, 
By George H. Dohan Company 









Printed in the United States of America 



■<S)CI.A. r 5l2<>4 4 
MR- U -1919 






DEDICATED 

TO 
MY COMRADE AND HOSPITAL MATE, 

LANCE-CORPORAL WOOD, 

OF THE KING'S OWN LIVERPOOLS, 

CITIZEN OF MASSACHUSETTS, 

WHO JOINED THE BRITISH ARMY IN 

AUGUST, 1914. 



"... more than my brother, how shall I thank thee for 

it all? 
Each of the heroes around us has fought for his house and 

his line, 
But thou hast fought for a stranger in hate of a wrong not 

thine, 
Happy are all free peoples too strong to be dispossessed, 
But happiest those among nations that dare to be strong for 

the rest." 

— Elizabeth Barrett Browning 



INTRODUCTION 

The author of this book, my brother, died in a French 
military hospital of the effects of exposure in the last 
fierce fighting that broke the Prussian power over Chris- 
tendom; fighting for which he had volunteered after 
being invalided home. Any notes I can jot down about 
him must necessarily seem jerky and incongruous; for 
in such a relation memory is a medley of generalisation 
and detail, not to be uttered in words. One thing at least 
may fitly be said here. Before he died he did at least two 
things that he desired. One may seem much greater than 
the other; but he would not have shrunk from naming 
them together. He saw the end of an empire that was 
the nightmare of the nations ; but I believe it pleased him 
almost as much that he had been able, often in the inter- 
vals of bitter warfare and by the aid of a brilliant mem- 
ory, to put together these pages on the history, so neces- 
sary and so strangely neglected, of the great democracy 
which he never patronised, which he not only loved but 
honoured. 
. Cecil Edward Chesterton was born on November 12, 
1879; and there is a special if a secondary sense in which 
we may use the phrase that he was born a fighter. It 
may seem in some sad fashion a flippancy to say that he 
argued from his very cradle. It is certainly, in the same 
sad fashion, a comfort, to remember one truth about our 
relations : that we perpetually argued and that we never 
quarrelled. In a sense it was the psychological truth, I 
fancy, that we never quarrelled because we always ar- 
gued. His lucidity and love of truth kept things so 
much on the level of logic, that the rest of our relations 



viii INTRODUCTION 

remained, thank God, in solid sympathy; long before that 
later time when, in substance, our argument had become 
an agreement. Nor, I think, was the process valueless; 
for at least we learnt how to argue in defence of our 
agreement. But the retrospect is only worth a thought 
now, because it illustrates a duality which seemed to him, 
and is, very simple; but to many is baffling in its very 
simplicity. When I say his weapon was logic, it will be 
currently confused with formality or even frigidity : a 
silly superstition always pictures the logician as a pale- 
faced prig. He was a living proof, a very living proof, 
that the precise contrary is the case. In fact it is gener- 
ally the warmer and more sanguine sort of man who has 
an appetite for abstract definitions and even abstract 
distinctions. He had all the debating dexterity of a genial 
and generous man like Charles Fox. He could command 
that more than legal clarity and closeness which really 
marked the legal arguments of a genial and generous man 
like Danton. In his wonderfully courageous public 
speaking, he rather preferred being a debater to being an 
orator; in a sense he maintained that no man had a right 
to be an orator without first being a debater. Eloquence, 
he said, had its proper place when reason had proved a 
thing to be right, and it was necessary to give men the 
courage to do what was right. I think he never needed 
any man's eloquence to give him that. But the substi- 
tution of sentiment for reason, in the proper place for 
reason, affected him "as musicians are affected by a false 
note." It was the combination of this intellectual in- 
tegrity with extraordinary warmth and simplicity in the 
affections that made the point of his personality. The 
snobs and servile apologists of the regime he resisted 
seem to think they can atone for being hard-hearted by 
being soft-headed. He reversed, if ever a man did, that 



INTRODUCTION ix 

relation in the organs. The opposite condition really 
covers all that can be said of him in this brief study; it 
is the clue not only to his character but to his career. 

If rationalism meant being rational (which it hardly 
ever does) he might at every stage of his life be called 
a red-hot rationalist. Thus, for instance, he very early 
became a Socialist and joined the Fabian Society, on the 
executive of which he played a prominent part for some 
years. But he afterwards gave the explanation, very 
characteristic for those who could understand it, that 
what he liked about the Fabian sort of Socialism was its 
hardness. He meant intellectual hardness; the fact that 
the society avoided sentimentalism, and dealt in affirma- 
tions and not mere associations. He meant that upon 
the Fabian basis a Socialist was bound to believe in So- 
cialism, but not in sandals, free love, bookbinding, and 
immediate disarmament. But he also added that, while 
he lik~d their hardness, he disliked their moderation. In 
other words, when he discovered, or believed that he dis- 
covered, that their intellectual hardness was combined 
with moral hardness, or rather moral deadness, he felt 
all the intellectual ice melted by a moral flame. He had, 
so to speak, a reaction of emotional realism, in which 
he saw, as suddenly as simple men can see simple truth, 
the potterers of Social Reform, as the plotters of the 
Servile State. He was himself, above all things, a demo- 
crat as well as a Socialist; and in that intellectual sect 
he began to feel as if he were the only Socialist who was 
also a democrat. His dogmatic, democratic conviction 
would alone illustrate the falsity of the contrast between 
logic and life. The idea of human equality existed with 
extraordinary clarity in his brain, precisely because it 
existed with extraordinary simplicity in his character. 
His popuplar sympathies, unlike so many popular sen- 



x INTRODUCTION 

timents, could really survive any intimacy with the popu- 
lace; they followed the poor not only at public meetings 
but to public houses. He was literally the only man I 
ever knew who was not only never a snob, but appar- 
ently never tempted to be a snob. The fact is almost 
more important than his wonderful lack of fear; for such 
good causes, when they cannot be lost by fear, are often 
lost by favour. 

Thus he came to suspect that Socialism was merely 
social reform, and that social reform was merely slavery. 
But the point still is that though his attitude to it was 
now one of revolt, it was anything but a mere revulsion of 
feeling. He did, indeed, fall back on fundamental 
things, on a fury at the oppression of the poor, on a pity 
for slaves, and especially for contented slaves. But it 
is the mark of his type of mind that he did not abandon 
Socialism without a rational case against it, and a ra- 
tional system to oppose to it. The theory he substituted 
for Socialism is that which may for convenience be called 
Distributivism ; the theory that private property is proper 
to every private citizen. This is no place for its expo- 
sition; but it will be evident that such a conversion 
brings the convert into touch with much older traditions 
of human freedom, as expressed in the family or the 
guild. And it was about the same time that, having for 
some time held an Anglo-Catholic position, he joined the 
Roman Catholic Church. It is notable, in connection 
with the general argument, that while the deeper reasons 
for such a change do not concern such a sketch as this, 
he was again characteristically amused and annoyed with 
the sentimentalists, sympathetic or hostile, who supposed 
he was attracted by ritual, music, and emotional mys- 
ticism. He told such people, somewhat to their bewil- 
derment, that he had been converted because Rome alone 



INTRODUCTION xi 

could satisfy the reason. In his case, of course, as in 
Newman's and numberless others, well-meaning people 
conceived a thousand crooked or complicated explana- 
tions, rather than suppose that an obviously honest man 
believed a thing because he thought it was true. He was 
soon to give a more dramatic manifestation of his strange 
taste for the truth. 

The attack on political corruption, the next and per- 
haps the most important passage in his life, still illus- 
trates the same point, touching reason and enthusiasm. 
Precisely because he did know what Socialism is and 
what it is not, precisely because he had at least learned 
that from the intellectual hardness of the Fabians, he 
saw the spot where Fabian Socialism is not hard but soft. 
Socialism means the assumption by the State of all the 
means of production, distribution, and exchange. To 
quote (as he often quoted with a rational relish) the 
words of Mr. Balfour, that is Socialism and nothing else 
is Socialism. To such clear thinking, it is at once ap- 
parent that trusting a thing to the State must always 
mean trusting it to the statesmen. He could defend So- 
cialism because he could define Socialism; and he was 
not helped or hindered by the hazy associations of the 
sort of Socialists who perpetually defended what they 
never defined. Such men might have a vague vision of 
red flags and red ties waving in an everlasting riot above 
the fall of top-hats and Union Jacks; but he knew that 
Socialism established meant Socialism official, and con- 
ducted by some sort of officials. All the primary forms 
of private property were to be given to the government; 
and it occurred to him, as a natural precaution, to give 
a glance at the government. He gave some attention 
to the actual types and methods of that governing and 
official class, into whose power trams and trades and 



xii INTRODUCTION 

shops and houses were already passing, amid loud Fa- 
bian cheers for the progress of Socialism. He looked at 
modern parliamentary government ; he looked at it ration- 
ally and steadily and not without reflection. And the 
consequence was that he was put in the dock, and very 
nearly put in the lock-up, for calling it what it is. 

In collaboration with Mr. Belloc he had written "The 
Party System," in which the plutocratic and corrupt 
nature of our present polity is set forth. And when Mr. 
Belloc founded the Eye-Witness, as a bold and independ- 
ent organ of the same sort of criticism, he served as the 
energetic second in command. He subsequently became 
editor of the Eye-Witness, which was renamed as the 
New Witness. It was during the latter period that the 
great test case of political corruption occurred; pretty 
well known in England, and unforunately much better 
known in Europe, as the Marconi scandal. To narrate 
its alternate secrecies and sensations would be impossible 
here ; but one fashionable fallacy about it may be explod- 
ed with advantage. An extraordinary notion still exists 
that the New Witness denounced Ministers for gambling 
on the Stock Exchange. It might be improper for Min- 
isters to gamble; but gambling was certainly not a mis- 
demeanor that would have hardened with any special 
horror so hearty an Anti-Puritan as the man of whom 
I write. The Marconi case did not raise the difficult 
ethics of gambling, but the perfectly plain ethics of se- 
cret commissions. The charge against the Ministers was 
that, while a government contract was being considered, 
they tried to make money out of a secret tip, given them 
by the very government contractor with whom their gov- 
ernment was supposed to be bargaining. This was what 
their accuser asserted; but this was not what they at- 
tempted to answer by a prosecution. He was prosecuted, 



INTRODUCTION xiii 

not for what he had said of the government, but for 
some secondary things he had said of the government 
contractor. The latter, Mr. Godfrey Isaacs, gained a 
verdict for criminal libel; and the judge inflicted a fine 
of £ ioo. Readers may have chanced to note the sub- 
sequent incidents in the life of Mr. Isaacs, but I am here 
only concerned with incidents in the life of a more inter- 
esting person. 

In any suggestion of his personality, indeed, the point 
does not lie in what was done to him, but rather in what 
was not done. He was positively assured, upon the very 
strongest and most converging legal authority, that un- 
less he offered certain excuses he would certainly go to 
prison for several years. He did not offer those ex- 
cuses; and I believe it never occurred to him to do so. 
His freedom from fear of all kinds had about it a sort 
of solid unconsciousness and even innocence. This ho- 
mogeneous quality in it has been admirably seized and 
summed up by Mr. Belloc in a tribute of great truth and 
power. "His courage was heroic, native, positive and 
equal : always at the highest potentiality of courage. He 
never in his life checked an action or a word from a con- 
sideration of personal caution, and that is more than can 
be said of any other man of his time." After the more 
or less nominal fine, however, his moral victory was 
proved in the one way in which a military victory can 
ever be proved. It is the successful general who con- 
tinues his own plan of campaign. Whether a battle be 
ticketed in the history books as lost or won, the test is 
which side can continue to strike. He continued to strike, 
and to strike harder than ever, up to the very moment of 
that yet greater experience which changed all such mili- 
tary symbols into military facts. A man with instincts 
unspoiled and in that sense almost untouched, he would 



xiv INTRODUCTION 

have always answered quite naturally to the autochtho- 
nous appeal of patriotism; but it is again characteristic 
of him that he desired, in his own phrase, to "rationalize 
patriotism," which he did upon the principles of Rous- 
seau, that contractual theory which, in these pages, he 
connects with the great name of Jefferson. But things 
even deeper than patriotism impelled him against Prus- 
sianism. His enemy was the barbarian when he en- 
slaves, as something more hellish even than the barbarian 
when he slays. His was the spiritual instinct by which 
Prussian order was worse than Prussian anarchy; and 
nothing was so inhuman as an inhuman humanitarian- 
ism. If you had asked him for what he fought and 
died amid the wasted fields of France and Flanders, he 
might very probably have answered that it was to save 
the world from German social reforms. 

This note, necessarily so broken and bemused, must 
reach its useless end. I have said nothing of number- 
less things that should be remembered at the mention of 
his name ; of his books, which were great pamphlets and 
may yet be permanent pamphlets; of his journalistic ex- 
posures of other evils besides the Marconi, exposures 
that have made a new political atmosphere in the very 
election that is stirring around us ; of his visit to America, 
which initiated him into aji international friendship 
which is the foundation of this book. Least of all can 
I write of him apart from his work; of that loss noth- 
ing can be said by those who do not suffer it, and less 
still by those who do. And his experiences in life and 
death were so much greater even than my experiences 
of him, that a double incapacity makes me dumb. A 
portrait is impossible ; as a friend he is too near me, and 
as a hero too far away. 

GILBERT K. CHESTERTON. 



PREFACE 

I have taken advantage of a very brief respite from 
other, and in my judgment more valuable, employment, 
to produce this short sketch of the story of a great people, 
now our Ally. My motive has been mainly that I do not 
think that any such sketch concentrated enough to be 
readable by the average layman (especially in these 
days) than to study more elaborate and authoritative his- 
tories, at present exists, and I have thought that in writ- 
ing it I might perhaps be discharging some little part 
of the heavy debt of gratitude which I owe to America 
for the hospitality I received from her when I visited her 
shores during the early months of the War. 

This book is in another sense the product of that visit. 
What I then saw and heard of contemporary America 
so fascinated me that — believing as I do that the key to 
every people is in its past — I could not rest until I had 
mastered all that I could of the history of my delightful 
hosts. This I sought as much as possible from the orig- 
inal sources, reading voraciously, and at the time merely 
for my pleasure, such records as I could get of old de- 
bates and of the speech and correspondence of the dead. 
The two existing histories, which I also read, and upon 
which I have drawn most freely, are that of the present 
President of the United States and that of Professor 
Rhodes, dealing with the period from 1850 to 1876. 
With the conclusions of the latter authority it will be 
obvious that I am in many respects by no means at one ; 
but I think it the more necessary to say that without a 
careful study of his book I could neither have formed 

XV 



xvi PREFACE 

my own conclusions nor ventured to challenge his. The 
reading that I did at the time of which I speak is the 
foundation of what I have now written. It will be well 
understood that a Private in the British Army, even when 
invalided home for a season, has not very great oppor- 
tunities for research. I think it very likely that errors 
of detail may be discovered in these pages; I am quite 
sure that I could have made the book a better one if I 
had been able to give more time to revising my studies. 
Yet I believe that the story told here is substantially 
true; and I am very sure that it is worth the telling. 

If I am asked why I think it desirable at this moment 
to attempt, however inadequately, a history of our latest 
Ally, I answer that at this moment the whole future of 
our civilization may depend upon a thoroughly good un- 
derstanding between those nations which are now joined 
in battle for its defence, and that ignorance of each 
other's history is perhaps the greatest menace to such an 
understanding.- To take one instance at random — how 
many English writers have censured, sometimes in terms 
of friendly sorrow, sometimes in a manner somewhat 
Pharisaical, the treatment of Negroes in Southern States 
in all its phases, varying from the provision of separate 
waiting-rooms to sporadic outbreaks of lynching! How 
few ever mention, or seem to have even heard the word 
"Reconstruction" — a word which, in its historical con- 
notation, explains all ! 

I should, perhaps, add a word to those Americans who 
may chance to read this book. To them, of course, I 
must offer a somewhat different apology. I believe that, 
with all my limitations, I can tell my fellow-countrymen 
things about the history of America which they do not 
know. It would be absurd effrontery to pretend that I 
can tell Americans what they do not know. For them, 



PREFACE xvii 

whatever interest this book may possess must depend 
upon the value of a foreigner's interpretation of the facts. 
I know that I should be extraordinarily interested in an 
American's view of the story of England since the Sepa- 
ration; and I can only hope that some degree of such 
interest may attach to these pages in American eyes. 

It will be obvious to Americans that in some respects 
my view of their history is individual. For instance, I 
give Andrew Jackson both a greater place in the devel- 
opment of American democracy and a higher meed of 
personal praise than do most modern American historians 
and writers whom I have read. I give my judgment for 
what it is worth. In my view, the victory of Jackson 
over the Whigs was the turning-point of American his- 
tory and finally decided that the United States should be 
a democracy and not a parliamentary oligarchy. And I 
am further of opinion that, both as soldier and ruler, "Old 
Hickory" was a hero of whom any nation might well be 
proud. 

I am afraid that some offence may be given by my 
portrait of Charles Sumner. I cannot help it. I do not 
think that between his admirers and myself there is any 
real difference as to the kind of man he was. It is a kind 
that some people revere. It is a kind that I detest — 
absolutely leprous scoundrels excepted — more than I can 
bring myself to detest any other of God's creatures. 

CECIL CHESTERTON. 

Somewhere in France, May ist, 19 18 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I The English Colonies 25 

II Arms and the Rights of Man 41 

III "We, the People" 69 

IV The Mantle of Washington 87 

V The Virginian Dynasty 104 

VI The Jacksonian Revolution 134 

VII The Spoils of Mexico 159 

VIII The Slavery Question 183 

IX Secession and Civil War 217 

X "The Black Terror" 276 

XI The New Problems 306 



nx 



A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 



A HISTORY OF THE 
UNITED STATES 

CHAPTER I 

THE ENGLISH COLONIES 

In the year of Our Lord 1492, thirty-nine years after 
the taking of Constantinople by the Turks and eighteen 
years after the establishment of Caxton's printing press, 
one Christopher Columbus, an Italian sailor, set sail for 
Spain with the laudable object of converting the Khan 
of Tartary to the Christian Faith, and on his way dis- 
covered the continent of America. The islands on which 
Columbus first landed and the adjacent stretch of main- 
land from Mexico to Patagonia which the Spaniards who 
followed him colonized lay outside the territory which is 
now known as the United States. Nevertheless the 
instinct of the American democracy has always looked 
back to him as a sort of ancestor, and popular American 
tradition conceives of him as in some shadowy fashion 
a founder. And that instinct and tradition, like most 
such national instincts and traditions, is sound. 

In the epoch which most of us can remember pretty 
vividly — for it came to an abrupt end less than four 
years ago — when people were anxious to prove that 
everything important in human history had been done 
by "Teutons," there was a great effort to show that Co- 
lumbus was not really the first European discoverer of 

25 



26 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

America; that that honour belonged properly to certain 
Scandinavian sea-captains who at some time in the tenth 
or eleventh centuries paid a presumably piratical visit to 
the coast of Greenland. It may be so, but the incident 
is quite irrelevant. That one set of barbarians from the 
fjords of Norway came in their wanderings in contact 
with another set of barbarians living in the frozen lands 
north of Labrador is a fact, if it be a fact, of little or 
no historical import. The Vikings had no more to teach 
the Esquimaux than had the Esquimaux to teach the 
Vikings. Both were at that time outside the real civili- 
zation of Europe. 

Columbus, on the other hand, came from the very 
centre of European civilization and that at a time when 
that civilization was approaching the summit of one of 
its constantly recurrent periods of youth and renewal. 
In the North, indeed, what strikes the eye in the fifteenth 
century is rather the ugliness of a decaying order — the 
tortures, the panic of persecution, the morbid obsession 
of the dance macabre, things which many think of as 
Mediaeval but which belong really only to the Middle 
Ages when old and near to death. But all the South was 
already full of the new youth of the Renaissance. Boc- 
caccio had lived, Leonardo was at the height of his glory. 
In Angevin fields was already playing with his fellows 
the boy that was to be Rabelais. 

Such adventures as that of Columbus, despite his pious 
intentions with regard to the Khan of Tartary, were a 
living part of the Renaissance and were full of its spirit, 
and it is from the Renaissance that American civiliza- 
tion dates. It is an important point to remember about 
America, and especially about the English colonies which 
were to become the United States, that they have had 
no memory of the Middle Ages. They had and have, on 



THE ENGLISH COLONIES 27 

the other hand, a real informative memory of Pagan 
antiquity, for the age in which the oldest of them were 
born was full of enthusiasm for that memory, while it 
thought, as most Americans still think, of the Middle 
Ages as a mere feudal barbarism. 

Youth and adventurousness were not the only notes of 
the Renaissance, nor the only ones which we shall see 
affecting the history of America. Another note was 
pride, and with that pride in its reaction against the old 
Christian civilization went a certain un-Christian scorn 
towards poverty and still more of the ugliness and ignor- 
ance which go with poverty ; and there reappeared — to an 
extent at least, and naturally most of all where the old re- 
ligion had been completely lost — that naked Pagan re- 
pugnance which almost refused to recognize a human 
soul in the barbarian. It is notable that in these new 
lands which the Renaissance had thrown open to Euro- 
pean men there at once reappears that institution which 
had once been fundamental to Europe and which the 
Faith had slowly and with difficulty undermined and dis- 
solved — slavery. 

The English colonies in America owe their first origin 
partly to the English instinct for wandering and espe- 
cially for wandering on the sea, which naturally seized 
on the adventurous element in the Renaissance as that 
most congenial to the national temper and partly to the 
secular antagonism between England and Spain. Spain, 
whose sovereign then ruled Portugal and therefore the 
Portuguese as well as Spanish colonies, claimed the whole 
of the New World as part of her dominions, and her 
practical authority extended unchallenged from Califor- 
nia to Cape Horn. It would have been hopeless for Eng- 
land to have attempted seriously to challenge that author- 
ity where it existed, in view of the relative strength at 



28 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

that time of the two kingdoms; and in general the 
English seamen confined themselves to hampering and 
annoying the Spanish commerce by acts of privateering 
which the Spaniards naturally designated as piracy. But 
to the bold and inventive mind of the great Raleigh there 
occurred another conception. Spain, though she claimed 
the whole American continent, had not in fact made 
herself mistress of all its habitable parts. North of the 
rich lands which supplied gold and silver to the Spanish 
exchequer, but still well within the temperate zone of 
climate, lay great tracts bordering the Atlantic where no 
Spanish soldier or ruler had even set his foot. To found 
an English colony in the region would not be an im- 
possible task like the attempt to seize every part of the 
Spanish empire, yet it would be a practical challenge 
to the Spanish claim. Raleigh accordingly projected and 
others, entering into his plans, successfully planted an 
English settlement on the Atlantic seaboard to the south 
of Chesapeake Bay which, in honour of the Queen, was 
named "Virginia." 

In the subsequent history of the English colonies which 
became American States we often find a curious and 
recurrent reflection of their origin. Virginia was the 
first of those colonies to come into existence, and we shall 
see her both as a colony and as a state long retaining a 
sort of primacy amongst them. She also retained, in 
the incidents of her history and in the characters of many 
of her great men, a colour which seems partly Eliza- 
bethan. Her Jefferson, with his omnivorous culture, his 
love of music and the arts, his proficiency at the same 
time in sports and bodily exercises, suggests something 
of the graceful versatility of men like Essex and Raleigh, 
and we shall see her in her last agony produce a soldier 
about whose high chivalry and heroic and adventurous 



THE ENGLISH COLONIES 29 

failure there clings a light of romance that does not seem 
to belong to the modern world. 

If the external quarrels of England were the immedi- 
ate cause of the foundation of Virginia, the two colonies 
which next made their appearance owe their origin to 
her internal division. James I. and his son Charles I., 
though by conviction much more genuine Protestants 
than Elizabeth, were politically more disposed to treat 
the Catholics with leniency. The paradox is not, per- 
haps, difficult to explain. Being more genuinely Prot- 
estant they were more interested in the internecine quar- 
rels of Protestants, and their enemies in those internecine 
quarrels, the Puritans, now become a formidable party, 
were naturally the fiercest enemies of the old religion. 
This fact probably led the two first Stuarts to look upon 
that religion with more indulgence. They dared not 
openly tolerate the Catholics, but they were not unwilling 
to show them such favour as they could afford to give. 
Therefore when a Catholic noble, Lord Baltimore, pro- 
posed to found a new plantation in America where his 
co-religionists could practise their faith in peace and 
security the Stuart kings were willing enough to grant 
his request. James approved the project, his son con- 
firmed it, and under a Royal Charter from King Charles 
I., Lord Baltimore established his Catholic colony which 
he called "Maryland." The early history of this colony 
is interesting because it affords probably the first exam- 
ple of full religious liberty. It would doubtless have 
been suicidal for the Catholics, situated as they were, to 
attempt anything like persecution, but Baltimore and the 
Catholics of Maryland for many generations deserve 
none the less honour for the consistency with which they 
pursued their tolerant policy. So long as the Catholics 
remained in content all sects were not only tolerated but 



30 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

placed on a footing of complete equality before the law, 
and as a fact both the Nonconformist persecuted in Vir- 
ginia and the Episcopalian persecuted in New England 
frequently found refuge and peace in Catholic Maryland. 
The English Revolution of 168.9 produced a change. The 
new English Government was pledged against the toler- 
ation of Catholicism anywhere. The representative 
of the Baltimore family was deposed from the Governor- 
ship and the control transferred to the Protestants, who 
at once repealed the edicts of toleration and forbade the 
practice of the Catholic religion. They did not, however, 
succeed in extirpating it, and to this day many of the old 
Maryland families are Catholic, as are also a consider- 
able proportion of the negroes. It may further be noted 
that, though the experiment in religious equality was sup- 
pressed by violence, the idea seems never to have been 
effaced, and Maryland was one of the first colonies to 
accompany its demand for freedom with a declaration in 
favour of universal toleration. 

At about the same time that the persecuted Catholics 
found a refuge in Maryland, a similar refuge was sought 
by the persecuted Puritans. A number of these, who had 
found a temporary home in Holland, sailed thence for 
America in the celebrated Mayflower and colonized New 
England on the Atlantic coast far to the north of the 
plantations of Raleigh and Baltimore. From this root 
sprang the colonies of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Ver- 
mont and Rhode Island and later the States of New 
Hampshire and Maine. It would be putting it with iron- 
ical mildness to say that the Pilgrim Fathers did not 
imitate the tolerant example of the Catholic refugees. 
Religious persecution had indeed been practised by all 
parties in the quarrels of the sixteenth and seventeenth 
centuries; but for much of the early legislation of the 



THE ENGLISH COLONIES 31 

Puritan colonies one can find no parallel in the history 
of European men. Calvinism, that strange fierce creed 
which Wesley so correctly described as one that gave 
God the exact functions and attributes of the devil, pro- 
duced even in Europe a sufficiency of madness and hor- 
ror; but here was Calvinism cut off from its European 
roots and from the reaction and influence of Christian 
civilization. Its records read like those of a madhouse 
where religious maniacs have broken loose and locked 
up their keepers. We hear of men stoned to death for 
kissing their wives on the Sabbath, of lovers pilloried or 
flogged at the cart's tail for kissing each other at all with- 
out licence from the deacons, the whole culminating in a 
mad panic of wholesale demonism and witchburning so 
vividly described in one of the most brilliant of Mrs. 
Gaskell's stories, "Lois the Witch." Of course, in time 
the fanaticism of the first New England settlers cooled 
into something like sanity. But a strong Puritan tradi- 
tion remained and played a great part in American his- 
tory. Indeed, if Lee, the Virginian, has about him some- 
thing of the Cavalier, it is still more curious to note that 
nineteenth-century New England, with its atmosphere of 
quiet scholars and cultured tea parties, suddenly flung 
forth in John Brown a figure whose combination of sol- 
dierly skill with maniac fanaticism, of a martyr's for- 
titude with a murderer's cruelty, seems to have walked 
straight out of the seventeenth century and finds its near- 
est parallel in some of the warriors of the Covenant. 

The colonies so far enumerated owe their foundation 
solely to English enterprise and energy; but in the latter 
half of the seventeenth century foreign war brought to 
England a batch of colonies ready made. At the mouth 
of the Hudson River, between Maryland and the New 
England colonies, lay the Dutch settlement of New Am- 



32 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

sterdam. The first colonists who had established them- 
selves there had been Swedes, but from Sweden its sov- 
ereignty had passed to Holland, and the issue of the 
Dutch wars gave it to the English, by whom it was re- 
christened New York in honour of the King's brother, 
afterwards James II. It would perhaps be straining the 
suggestion already made of the persistent influences of 
origins to see in the varied racial and national beginnings 
of New York a presage of that cosmopolitan quality 
which still marks the greatest of American cities, making 
much of it a patchwork of races and languages, and giv- 
ing to the electric stir of Broadway an air which suggests 
a Continental rather than an English city, but it is more 
plausible to note that New York had no original link 
with the Puritanism of New England and of the North 
generally, and that in fact we shall find the premier city 
continually isolated from the North, following a tradi- 
tion and a policy of its own. 

With New Amsterdam was also ceded the small Dutch 
plantation of Delaware which lay between Maryland 
and the Atlantic, while England at the same time estab- 
lished her claim to the disputed territory between the two 
which became the colony of New Jersey. 

Shortly after the cession of New Amsterdam William 
Penn obtained from Charles II. a charter for the estab- 
lishment of a colony to the north of Maryland, between 
that settlement and the newly acquired territories of New 
Jersey and New York. This plantation was designed es- 
pecially as a refuge for the religious sect to which Penn 
belonged, the Quakers, who had been persecuted by all 
religious parties and especially savagely by the Puritan 
colonists of New England. Penn, the most remarkable 
man that ever professed the strange doctrines of that 
sect, was a favourite with the King, who had a keen eye 



THE ENGLISH COLONIES 33 

for character, and as the son of a distinguished admiral 
he had a sort of hereditary claim upon the gratitude of 
the Crown. He easily carried his point with Charles, 
and himself supervised the foundations of the new com- 
monwealth of Pennsylvania. Two surveyors were sent 
out by royal authority to fix the boundary between Penn's 
concession and the existing colony of Maryland — Mr. 
Mason and Mr. Dixon by name. However elated these 
two gentlemen may have been by their appointment to so 
responsible an office, they probably little thought that 
their names would be immortalized. Yet so it was to be. 
For the line they drew became the famous "Mason- 
Dixon" line, and was to be in after years the frontier be- 
tween the Slave States and the Free. 

In all that he did in the New World Penn showed 
himself not only a great but a most just and wise man. 
He imitated, with happiest issue, the liberality of Balti- 
more in the matter of religious freedom, and to this day 
the Catholics of Philadelphia boast of possessing the only 
Church in the United States in which .Mass has been 
said continuously since the seventeenth century. But it 
is in his dealings with the natives that Penn's humanity 
and honour stand out most conspicuously. None of the 
other founders of English colonies had ever treated the 
Indians except as vermin to be exterminated as quickly 
as possible. Penn treated them as free contracting par- 
ties with full human right. He bought of them fairly 
the land he needed, and strictly observed every article 
of the pact that he made with them. Any one visiting 
to-day the city which he founded will find in its centre 
a little strip of green, still unbuilt upon, where, in theory, 
any passing Indians are at liberty to pitch their camp — 
a monument and one of the clauses of Penn's celebrated 
treaty. 



34 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

In the same reign the settlement of the lands lying to 
the south of Virginia had begun, under the charter grant- 
ed by Charles II. to the Hyde family, and the new plan- 
tations were called after the sovereign "Carolina." But 
their importance dates from the next century, when they 
received the main stream of a new tide of immigration 
due to political and economic causes. England, having 
planted a Protestant Anglo-Scottish colony in North- 
East Ireland, proceeded to ruin its own creature by a 
long series of commercial laws directed to the protection 
of English manufacturers against the competition of the 
colonists. Under the pressure of this tyranny a great 
number of these colonists, largely Scotch by original na- 
tionality and Presbyterian by religion, left Ulster for 
America. They poured into the Carolinas, North and 
South, as well as into Pennsylvania and Virginia, and 
overflowed into a new colony which was established fur- 
ther west and named Georgia. It is important to note 
this element in the colonization of the Southern States, 
because it is too often loosely suggested that the later 
division of North and South corresponded to the division 
of Cavalier and Puritan. It is not so. Virginia and 
Maryland may be called Cavalier in their origin, but in 
the Carolinas and Georgia there appears a Puritan tra- 
dition, not indeed as fanatical as that of New England 
but almost as persistent. Moreover this Scotch-Irish 
stock, whose fathers, it may be supposed, left Ireland 
in no very good temper with the rulers of Great Britain, 
afterwards supplied the most military and the most de- 
termined element in Washington's armies, and gave to 
the Republic some of its most striking historical person- 
alities — Patrick Henry and John Caldwell Calhoun, 
Jackson, the great President, and his namesake the bril- 
liant soldier of the Confederacy. 



THE ENGLISH COLONIES 35 

The English colonies now formed a solid block extend- 
ing from the coasts of Maine — into which northern- 
most region the New England colonies had overflown — 
to the borders of Florida. Florida was still a Spanish 
possession, but Spain had ceased to be formidable as a 
rival or enemy of England. By the persistence of a cen- 
tury in arms and diplomacy, the French had worn down 
the Spanish power, and France was now easily the 
strongest nation in Europe. France also had a foothold 
or rather two footholds in North America. One of her 
colonies, Louisiana, lay beyond Florida at the mouth of 
the Mississippi; the other, Canada, to the north of the 
Maine, at the mouth of the St. Lawrence. It was the 
aim of French colonial ambition to extend both colonies 
inland into the unmapped heart of the American conti- 
nent until they should meet. This would necessarily have 
had the effect of hemming in the English settlements on 
the Atlantic seaboard and preventing their Western ex- 
pansion. Throughout the first half of the eighteenth 
century, therefore, the rivalry grew more and more acute, 
and even when France and England were at peace, the 
French and English in America were almost constantly 
at war. Their conflict was largely carried on under cover 
of alliances with the warring Indian tribes, whose feuds 
kept the region of the Great Lakes in a continual tur- 
moil. The outbreak of the Seven Years' War and the 
intervention of England as an ally of Prussia put an end 
to the necessity for such pretexts, and a regular military 
campaign opened upon which was staked the destiny of 
North America. 

It is not necessary for the purposes of this book to 
follow that campaign in detail. The issue was necessar- 
ily fought out in Canada, for Louisiana lay remote from 
the English colonies and was separated from them by 



36 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

the neutral territory of the Spanish Empire. England 
had throughout the war the advantage of superiority at 
sea, which enabled her to supply and reinforce her 
armies while the French forces were practically cut off 
from Europe. The French, on the other hand, had at 
the beginning the advantage of superior numbers, at least 
so far as regular troops were concerned, while for defen- 
sive purposes they possessed an excellent chain of very 
strong fortresses carefully prepared before the war. Af- 
ter the earlier operations which cleared the French in- 
vaders out of the English colonies, the gradual reduction 
of these strongholds practically forms the essence of the 
campaign undertaken by a succession of English generals 
under the political direction of the elder Pitt. That cam- 
paign was virtually brought to a close by the brilliant 
exploit of James Wolfe in 1750, — the taking of Quebec. 
By the Treaty of Paris in 1753 Canada was ceded to 
England. Meanwhile Louisiana had been transferred to 
Spain in 1762 as part of the price of a Spanish alliance, 
and France ceased to be a rival to England on the Amer- 
ican continent. 

During the French war the excellent professional army 
which England was able to maintain in the field was 
supported by levies raised from the English colonies, 
which did good service in many engagements. Among 
the officers commanding these levies one especially had 
attracted by his courage and skill, and notably by the part 
he bore in the clearing of Pennsylvania, the notice of his 
superiors — George Washington of Virginia. 

England was now in a position to develop in peace the 
empire which her sword had defended with such splen- 
did success and glory. Before we consider the causes 
which so suddenly shattered that empire, it is necessary 



THE ENGLISH COLONIES 37 

to take a brief survey of its geography and of its eco- 
nomic conditions. 

The colonies, as we have seen, were spread along the 
Atlantic seaboard to an extent of well over a thousand 
miles, covering nearly twenty degrees of latitude. The 
variations of climate were naturally great, and involved 
marked differentiations in the character and products of 
labour. The prosperity of the Southern colonies depend- 
ed mainly upon two great staple industries. Raleigh, in 
the course of his voyages, had learned from the Indians 
the use of the tobacco plant and had introduced that 
admirable discovery into Europe. As Europe learned 
(in spite of the protests of James I.) to prize the glorious 
indulgence now offered to it, the demand for tobacco 
grew, and its supply became the principal business of the 
colonies of Virginia and Maryland. Further to the south 
a yet more important and profitable industry was estab- 
lished. The climate of the Carolinas and of Georgia and 
of the undeveloped country west of these colonies, a cli- 
mate at once warm and humid, was found to be exactly 
suited to the cultivation of the cotton plant. This proved 
the more important when the discoveries of Watt and 
Arkwright gave Lancashire the start of all the world 
in the manipulation of the cotton fabric. From that mo- 
ment begins the triumphant progress of "King Cotton" 
which was to long outlast the political connection between 
the Carolinas and Lancashire, and was to give in the 
political balance of America peculiar importance to the 
"Cotton States." 

But at the time now under consideration these cot- 
ton-growing territories were still under the British 
Crown, and were subject to the Navigation Laws upon 
which England then mainly relied for the purpose of 
making her colonies a source of profit to her. The mail? 



38 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

effect of these was to forbid the colonies to trade with 
any neighbour save the mother country. This condi- 
tion, to which the colonists seem to have offered no oppo- 
sition, gave to the British manufacturers the immense 
advantage of an unrestricted supply of raw materials to 
which no foreigner had access. It is among the curious 
ironies of history that the property of Lancashire which 
was afterwards to be identified with Free Trade was 
originally founded upon this very drastic and successful 
form of Protection. 

The more northerly colonies had no such natural ad- 
vantages. The bulk of the population lived by ordinary 
farming, grew wheat and the hard cereals and raised 
cattle. But during the eighteenth century England her- 
self was still an exporting country as regards these com- 
modities, and with other nations the colonists were for- 
bidden to trade. The Northern colonies had, therefore, 
no considerable export commerce, but on the seaboard 
they gradually built up a considerable trade as carriers, 
and Boston and New York merchant captains began to 
have a name on the Atlantic for skill and enterprize. 
Much of the trans-oceanic trade passed into their hands, 
and especially one most profitable if not very honourable 
trade of which, by the Treaty of Utrecht, England had 
obtained a virtual monopoly — the trade in negro slaves. 

The pioneers of this traffic had been Sir John Hawk- 
ins, one of the boldest of the great Elizabethan sailors. 
He seems to have been the first of the merchant ad- 
venturers to realize that it might prove profitable to kid- 
nap negroes from the West Coast of Africa and sell 
them into slavery in the American colonies. The culti- 
vation of cotton and tobacco in the Southern plantations, 
as of sugar in the West Indies, offered a considerable 
demand for labour of a type suitable to the negro. The 



THE ENGLISH COLONIES 39 

attempt to compel the native Indians to such labour had 
failed, the negro proved more tractable. By the time 
with which we are dealing the whole industry of the 
Southern colonies already rested upon servile coloured 
labour. 

In the Northern colonies — that is, those north of Mary- 
land — the negro slave existed, but only casually, and, 
as it were, as a sort of accident. Slavery was legal in 
all the colonies — even in Pennsylvania, whose great 
founder had been almost alone in that age in disapprov- 
ing of it. As for the New England Puritans, they had 
from the first been quite enthusiastic about the traffic, in 
which indeed they were deeply interested as middle-men ; 
and Calvinist ministers of the purest orthodoxy held 
services of thanksgiving to God for cargoes of poor bar- 
barians rescued from the darkness of heathendom and 
brought (though forcibly) into the gospel light. But 
though the Northerners had no more scruple about slav- 
ery than the Southerners, they had far less practical use 
for it. The negro was of no value for the sort of labour 
in which the New Englanders engaged; he died of it in 
the cold climate. Negro slaves there were in all the 
Northern States, but mostly as domestic servants or en- 
gaged in casual occupations. They were a luxury, not 
a necessity. 

A final word must be said about the form of govern- 
ment under which the colonists lived. In all the colo- 
nies, though there were, of course, variations of detail, 
it was substantially the same. It was founded in every 
case upon Royal Charters granted at some time or other 
to the planters of the English king. In every case there 
was a Governor, who was assisted by some sort of elec- 
tive assembly. The Governor was the representative of 
the King and was nominated by him. The legislative was 



40 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

in some form or other elected by the free citizens. The 
mode of election and the franchise varied from colony 
to colony — Massachusetts at one time based hers upon 
paid rents — but it was generally in harmony with the 
feeling and traditions of the colonists. It was seldom 
that any friction occurred between the King's represen- 
tative and the burgesses, as they were generally called. 
While the relations between the colonies and the mother 
country remained tranquil the Governor had every mo- 
tive for pursuing a conciliatory policy. His personal 
comfort depended upon his being popular in the only 
society which he could frequent. His repute with the 
Home Government, if he valued it, was equally served 
by the tranquillity and contentment of the dominion he 
ruled. 

In fact, the American colonists, during the eighteenth 
century, enjoyed what a simple society left to itself al- 
most always enjoys, under whatever forms — the sub- 
stance of democracy. That fact must be emphasized, 
because without a recognition of it the flaming response 
which met the first proclamation of theoretic democracy 
would be unintelligible. It is explicable only when we 
remember that to the unspoiled conscience of man as 
man democracy will ever be the most self-evident of 
truths. It is the complexity of our civilization that blinds 
us to its self -evidence, teaching us to acquiesce in irra- 
tional privilege as inevitable, and at last to see nothing 
strange in being ruled by a class whether of nobles or of 
mere parliamentarians. But the man who looks at the 
world with the terrible eyes of his first innocence can 
never see an unequal law as anything but an iniquity, or 
government divorced from the general will as anything 
but usurpation. 



CHAPTER II 

ARMS AND THE RIGHTS OF MAN 

Such was roughly the position of the thirteen English 
colonies in North America when in the year 1764, short- 
ly after the conclusion of the Seven Years' War, George 
Grenville, who had become the chief minister of George 
III, after the failure of Lord Bute, first proposed to raise 
a revenue from these colonies by the imposition of a 
Stamp Act. 

The Stamp Act and the resistance it met mark so obvi- 
ously the beginning of the business which ended in the 
separation of the United States from Great Britain, that 
Grenville and the British Parliament have been fre- 
quently blamed for the lightness of heart with which they 
entered upon so momentous a course. But in fact it did 
not seem to them momentous, nor is it easy to say why 
they should have thought it momentous. It is certain 
that Grenville's political opponents, many of whom were 
afterwards to figure as the champions of the colonists, at 
first saw its momentousness as little as he. They offered 
to his proposal only the most perfunctory sort of oppo- 
sition, less than they habitually offered to all his mea- 
sures, good or bad. 

And, in point of fact, there was little reason why a 
Whig of the type and class that then governed England 
should be startled or shocked by a proposal to extend 
the English system of stamping documents to the Eng- 
lish colonies. That Parliament had the legal right to 

41 



42 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

tax the colonies was not seriously questionable. Under 
the British Constitution the power of King, Lords and 
Commons over the King's subjects was and is absolute, 
and none denied that the colonists were the King's sub- 
jects. They pleaded indeed that their charters did not 
expressly authorize such taxation; but neither did they 
expressly exclude it, and on a strict construction it would 
certainly seem that a power which would have existed 
if there had been no charter, remained when the charter 
was silent. 

It might further be urged that equity as well as law 
justified the taxation of the colonies, for the expenditure 
which these taxes were raised to meet was largely in- 
curred in defending the colonies first against the French 
and then against the Indians. The method of taxation 
chosen was not new, neither had it been felt to be specially 
grievous. Much revenue is raised in Great Britain and 
all European countries to-day by that method, and there 
is probably no form of taxation at which men grumble 
less. Its introduction into America had actually been 
recommended on its merits by eminent Americans. It 
had been proposed by the Governor of Pennsylvania as 
early as 1739. It had been approved at one time by 
Benjamin Franklin himself. To-day it must seem to 
most of us both less unjust and less oppressive than the 
Navigation Laws, which the colonists bore without com- 
plaint. 

As for the suggestion sometimes made that there was 
something unprecedentedly outrageous about an English 
Parliament taxing people who were unrepresented there, 
it is, in view of the constitution of that Parliament, some- 
what comic. If the Parliament of 1764 could only tax 
those whom it represented, its field of taxation would be 
somewhat narrow. Indeed, the talk about taxation with- 



ARMS AND THE RIGHTS OF MAN 43 

out representation being tyranny, however honestly it 
might be uttered by an American, could only be conscious 
or unconscious hypocrisy in men like Burke, who were 
not only passing their lives in governing and taxing peo- 
ple who were unrepresented, but who were quite unpeni- 
tently determined to resist any attempt to get them rep- 
resented even in the most imperfect fashion. 

All this is true ; and yet it is equally true that the pro- 
posed tax at once excited across the Atlantic the most 
formidable discontents. Of these discontents we may 
perhaps summarize the immediate causes as follows. 
Firstly, no English minister or Parliament had, as a fact, 
ever before attempted to tax the colonies. That impor- 
tant feature of the case distinguished it from that of the 
Navigation Laws, which had prescription on their side. 
Then, if the right to tax were once admitted, no one could 
say how far it would be pushed. Under the Navigation 
Laws the colonists knew just how far they were re- 
stricted, and they knew , that within the limits of such 
restrictions they could still prosper. But if once the 
claim of the British Parliament to tax were quietly ac- 
cepted, it seemed likely enough that every British minis- 
ter who had nowhere else to turn for a revenue would 
turn to the unrepresented colonies, which would furnish 
supply after supply until they were "bled white." That 
was a perfectly sound, practical consideration, and it 
naturally appealed with especial force to mercantile com- 
munities like that of Boston. 

But if we assume that it was the only consideration 
involved, we shall misunderstand all that followed, and 
be quite unprepared for the sweeping victory of a purely 
doctrinal political creed which brought about the huge 
domestic revolution of which the breaking of the ties 
with England was but an aspect. The colonists did feel 



44 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

it unjust that they should be taxed by an authority which 
was in no way responsible to them; and they so felt it 
because, as has already been pointed out, they enjoyed 
in the management of their everyday affairs a large 
measure of practical democracy. Therein they differed 
from the English, who, being habitually governed by 
an oligarchy, did not feel it extraordinary that the same 
oligarchy should tax them. The Americans for the most 
part governed themselves, and the oligarchy came in only 
as an alien and unnatural thing levying taxes. There- 
fore it was resisted. 

The resistance was at first largely instinctive. The 
formulation of the democratic creed which should justify 
it was still to come. Yet already there were voices, es- 
pecially in Virginia, which adumbrated the incomparable 
phrases of the greatest of Virginians. Already Richard 
Bland had appealed to "the law of Nature and those 
rights of mankind that flow from it." Already Patrick 
Henry had said, "Give me liberty or give me death !" 

It was but a foreshadowing of the struggle to come. 
In 1766 the Rockingham Whigs, having come into power 
upon the fall of Grenville, after some hesitation, repealed 
the Stamp Act, reaffirming at the same time the abstract 
right of Parliament to tax the colonies. America was 
for the time quieted. There followed in England a suc- 
cession of weak ministries, all, of course, drawn from 
the same oligarchical class, and all of much the same 
political temper, but all at issue with each other, and all 
more or less permanently at issue with the King. As a 
mere by-product of one of the multitudinous intrigues to 
which this situation gave rise, Charles Townshend, a bril- 
liant young Whig orator who had become Chancellor of 
the Exchequer, revived in 1767 the project of taxing the 
American colonies. This was now proposed in the form 



ARMS AND THE RIGHTS OF MAN 45 

of a series of duties levied on goods exported to those 
colonies — the one most obnoxious to the colonists and 
most jealously maintained by the ministers being a duty 
on tea. The Opposition had now learnt from the issue 
of the Stamp Tax debate that American taxation was 
an excellent issue on which to challenge the ministry, and 
the Tea Tax became at once a "Party Question" — that 
is, a question upon which the rival oligarchs divided 
themselves into opposing groups. 

Meanwhile in America the new taxes were causing even 
more exasperation than the Stamp Act had caused — prob- 
ably because they were more menacing in their form if 
not much more severe in their effect. At any rate, it is 
significant that in the new struggle we find the commer- 
cial State of Massachusetts very decidedly taking the 
lead. The taxed tea, on its arrival in Boston harbour, 
was seized and flung into the sea. A wise Government 
would have withdrawn when it was obvious that the 
enforcement of the taxes would cost far more than the 
taxes themselves were worth, the more so as they had 
already been so whittled down by concessions as to be 
worth practically nothing, and it is likely enough that 
the generally prudent and politic aristocrats who then 
directed the action of England would have reverted to 
the Rockingham policy had not the King made up his un- 
fortunate German mind to the coercion and humiliation 
of the discontented colonists. It is true that the British 
Crown had long lost its power of independent action, and 
that George III. had failed in his youthful attempts to re- 
capture it. Against the oligarchy combined he was help- 
less; but his preference for one group of oligarchs over 
another was still an asset, and he let it clearly be under- 
stood that such influence as he possessed would be exer- 
cised unreservedly in favour of any group that would 



46 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

undertake to punish the American rebels. He found in 
Lord North a minister willing, though not without con- 
siderable misgivings, to forward his policy and able to 
secure for it a majority in Parliament. And from that 
moment the battle between the Home Government and 
the colonists was joined. 

The character and progress of that battle will best 
be grasped if we mark down certain decisive incidents 
which determine its course. The first of these was the 
celebrated "Boston Tea Party" referred to above. It 
was the first act of overt resistance, and it was followed 
on the English side by the first dispatch of an armed 
force — grossly inadequate for its purpose — to America, 
and on the American by the rapid arming and drilling of 
the local militias not yet avowedly against the Crown, 
but obviously with the ultimate intention of resisting 
the royal authority should it be pushed too far. 

The next turning-point is the decision of the British 
Government early in 1774 to revoke the Charter of 
Massachusetts. It is the chief event of the period during 
which war is preparing, and it leads directly to all that 
follows. For it raised a new controversy which could 
not be resolved by the old legal arguments, good or bad. 
Hitherto the colonists had relied upon their interpreta- 
tion of existing charters, while the Government contented 
itself with putting forward a different interpretation. 
But the new action of that Government shifted the 
ground of debate from the question of the interpretation 
of the charters to that of the ultimate source of their 
authority. The ministers said in effect, "You pretend 
that this document concedes to you the right of immunity 
from taxation. We deny it: but at any rate, it was a 
free gift from the British Crown, and whatever rights 
you enjoy under it you enjoy during His Majesty's plea- 



ARMS AND THE RIGHTS OF MAN 47 

sure. Since you insist on misinterpreting it, we will- 
withdraw it, as we are perfectly entitled to do, and we 
will grant you a new charter about the terms of which 
no such doubts can arise." 

It was a very direct and very fundamental challenge, 
and it inevitably produced two effects — the one immedi- 
ate, the other somewhat deferred. Its practical first- 
fruit was the Continental Congress. Its ultimate but 
unmistakably logical consequence was the Declaration 
of Independence. 

America was unified on the instant, for every colony 
felt the knife at its throat. In September a Congress 
met, attended by the representatives of eleven colonies. 
Peyton Randolph, presiding, struck the note of the mo- 
ment with a phrase : "I am not a Virginian, but an 
American." Under Virginian leadership the Congress 
vigorously backed Massachusetts, and in October a 
"Declaration of Colonial Right" had been issued by the 
authority of all the colonies represented there. 

The British ministers seem to have been incomprehen- 
sibly blind to the seriousness of the situation. Since they 
were pledged not to concede what the colonists demand- 
ed, it was essential that they should at once summon all 
the forces at their command to crush what was already 
an incipient and most menacing rebellion. They did 
nothing of the sort. They slightly strengthened the to- 
tally inadequate garrison which would soon have to face 
a whole people in arms, and they issued a foolish proc- 
lamation merely provocative and backed by no power 
that could enforce it, forbidding the meeting of Conti- 
nental Congresses in the future. That was in January. 
In April the skirmishes of Lexington and Concord had 
shown how hopelessly insufficient was their military 
force to meet even local sporadic and unorganized re- 



48 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

volts. In May the second Continental Congress met, and 
in July appeared by its authority a general call to arms 
addressed to the whole population of America. 

Up to this point the colonists, if rebellious in their 
practical attitude, had been strictly constitutional in their 
avowed aims. In the "Declaration of Colonial Right" 
of 1774, and even in the appeal to arms of 1775, all sug- 
gestion of breaking away from the Empire was repudi- 
ated. But now that the sword was virtually drawn there 
were practical considerations which made the most pru- 
dent of the rebels consider whether it would not be wiser 
to take the final step, and frankly repudiate the British 
Sovereignty altogether. For one thing, by the laws of 
England, and indeed of all civilized nations, the man who 
took part in an armed insurrection against the head of 
the state committed treason, and the punishment for 
treason was death. Men who levied war on the King's 
forces while still acknowledging him as their lawful 
ruler were really inviting the Government to hang them 
as soon as it could catch them. It might be more diffi- 
cult for the British Government to treat as criminals 
soldiers who were fighting under the orders of an or- 
ganized de facto government, which at any rate declared 
itself to be that of an independent nation. Again, for- 
eign aid, which would not be given for the purpose of 
reforming the internal administration of British domin- 
ion, might well be forthcoming if it were a question of 
dismembering those dominions. These considerations 
were just and carried no little weight; yet it is doubtful 
if they would have been strong enough to prevail against 
the sentiments and traditions which still bound the colo- 
nies to the mother country, had not the attack on the 
charters forced the controversy back to first principles, 
and so opened the door of history to the man who was 



ARMS AND THE RIGHTS OF MAN 49 

to provide America with a creed and to convert the con- 
troversy from a legal to something like a religious 
quarrel. 

Old Peyton Randolph, who had so largely guided the 
deliberations of the first Continental Congress, was at 
the last moment prevented by ill health from attending 
the second. His place in the Virginian Delegation was 
taken by Thomas Jefferson. 

Jefferson was not yet thirty when he took his seat in 
the Continental Congress, but he was already a notable 
figure in his native State. He belonged by birth to the 
slave-holding gentry of the South, though not to the 
richest and most exclusive section of that class. Physi- 
cally he was long limbed and loose jointed, but muscu- 
lar, with a strong ugly face and red hair. He was adept 
at the physical exercises which the Southerners culti- 
vated most assiduously, a bold and tireless rider who 
could spend days in the saddle without fatigue, and a 
crack shot among Virginians. In pursuit of the arts 
and especially of music he was equally eager, and his 
restless intelligence was keenly intrigued by the new won- 
ders that physical science was beginning to reveal to 
men; mocking allusions to his interest in the habits of 
horned frogs will be found in American pasquinades of 
two generations. He had sat in the Virginian House of 
Burgesses and taken a prominent part in the resistance 
of that body to the royal demands. As a speaker, how- 
ever, he was never highly successful, and a just knowl- 
edge of his own limitations, combined perhaps with a 
temperamental dislike, generally led him to rely on his 
pen rather than his tongue in public debate. For as a 
writer he had command of a pure, lucid and noble Eng- 
lish unequalled in his generation and equalled by Cobbett 
alone. 



50 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

But for history the most important thing about the 
man is his creed. It was the creed of a man in the fore- 
front of his age, an age when French thinkers were busy- 
drawing from the heritage of Latin civilizations those 
fundamental principles of old Rome which custom and 
the corruptions of time had overgrown. The gospel of 
the new age had already been written : it had brought to 
the just mind of Jefferson a conviction which he was to 
communicate to all his countrymen, and through them 
to the new nation which the sword was creating. The 
Declaration of Independence is the foundation stone of 
the American Republic, and the Declaration of Independ- 
ence in its essential part is but an incomparable transla- 
tion and compression of the Contrat Social. The aid 
which France brought to America did not begin when a 
French fleet sailed into Chesapeake Bay. It began when, 
perhaps years before the first whisper of discontent, 
Thomas Jefferson sat down in his Virginian study to 
read the latest work of the ingenious M. Rousseau. 

For now the time was rife for such intellectual lead- 
ership as Jefferson armed by Rousseau could supply. 
The challenge flung down by the British Government in 
the matter of the charter of Massachusetts was to be 
taken up. The argument that whatever rights Americans 
might have they derived from Royal Charters was to be 
answered by one who held that their "inalienable rights 
were derived from a primordial charter granted not by 
King George but by his Maker. 

The second Continental Congress, after many hesita- 
tions, determined at length upon a complete severance 
with the mother country. A resolution to that effect 
was carried on the motion of Lee, the great Virginian 
gentleman, an ancestor of the noblest of Southern war- 






ARMS AND THE RIGHTS OF MAN 51 

riors. After much adroit negotiation a unanimous vote 
was secured for it. A committee was appointed to draft 
a formal announcement and defence of the step which 
had been taken. Jefferson was chosen a member of the 
committee, and to him was most wisely entrusted the 
drafting of the famous "Declaration." 

The introductory paragraphs of the Declaration of 
Independence contain the whole substance of the faith 
upon which the new Commonwealth was to be built, 
Without a full comprehension of their contents the sub- 
sequent history of America would be unintelligible. It 
will therefore be well to quote them here verbatim, and 
I do so the more readily because, apart from their his- 
toric importance, it is a pity that more Englishmen are 
not acquainted with this masterpiece of English prose. 

When in the course of human events it becomes neces- 
sary for one people to dissolve the political bands which 
have connected them with another and to assume among 
the powers of the earth the separate and equal station 
to which the laws of Nature and of Nature's God en- 
title them, a decent respect for the opinion of Mankind 
requires that they shall declare the cause that impels 
the separation. 

We hold these truths to be self-evident : that all men 
are created equal; that they are endowed by their Cre- 
ator with certain inalienable rights; that among tliese 
are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to 
secure these rights governments are instituted among 
men, deriving their just powers from tlie consent of the 
governed; that whenever any form of government be- 
comes destructive of those ends it is the right of the 
people to alter or to abolish it, and to reinstate a new 
government, laying its foundations on such principles 



52 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall 
seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. 

The Declaration goes on to specify the causes of 
grievances which the colonists conceive themselves "to 
have against the royal government, and concludes as 
follows : 

We, therefore, the representatives of the United States 
of America in General Congress assembled, appealing to 
the Supreme Judge of the World for the rectitude of 
our intentions, do in the name and by the authority of 
the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and 
declare that these United Colonies are and of right ought 
to be Free and Independent States. 

The first principles set out in the Declaration must be 
rightly grasped if American history is understood, for 
indeed the story of America is merely the story of the 
working out of those principles. Briefly the theses are 
two: firstly, that men are of right equal, and' secondly, 
that the moral basis of the relations between governors 
and governed is contractual. Both doctrines have in 
this age had to stand the fire of criticisms almost too 
puerile to be noticed. It is gravely pointed out that men 
are of different heights and weights, that they vary in 
muscular power and mental cultivation — as if either 
Rousseau or Jefferson was likely to have failed to notice 
this occult fact! Similarly the doctrine of the con- 
tractual basis of society is met by a demand for the 
production of a signed, sealed, and delivered contract, 
or at least for evidence that such a contract was ever 
made. But Rousseau says — with a good sense and mod- 
esty which dealers in "pre-historic" history would do 
well to copy — that he does not know how government 



ARMS AND THE RIGHTS OF MAN 53 

in fact arose. Nor does any one else. What he main- 
tains is that the moral sanction of government is con- 
tractual, or, as Jefferson puts it, that government "de- 
rives its just powers from the consent of the governed." 

The doctrine of human equality is in a sense mystical. 
It is not apparent to the senses, nor can it be logically 
demonstrated as any inference from anything of which 
the senses can take cognizance. It can only be stated 
accurately, and left to make its appeal to men's minds. 
It may be stated theologically by saying, as the Chris- 
tian theology says, that all men are equal before God. 
Or it may be stated in the form which Jefferson uses — 
that all men are equal in their "inalienable rights." But 
it must be accepted as a first principle or not at all. The 
nearest approach to a method of proving it is to take 
the alternative proposition and deduce its logical conclu- 
sion. Would those who would maintain that the "wisest 
and best" have rights superior to those of their neigh- 
bours, welcome a law which would enable any person 
demonstrably wiser or more virtuous than themselves to 
put them to death? I think that most of them have 
enough modesty (and humour) to shrink, as Huxley did, 
from such a proposition. But the alternative is the 
acceptance of Jefferson's doctrine that the fundamental 
rights of men are independent of adventitious differ- 
ences, whether material or moral, and depend simply 
upon their manhood. 

The other proposition, the contractual basis of human 
society and its logical consequences, the supremacy of 
the general will, can be argued in the same fashion. It 
is best defended by asking, like the Jesuit Suarez, the 
simple question : "If sovereignty is not in the People, 
where is it?" It is useless to answer that it is in the 
"wisest and best." Who are the wisest and best? For 



54 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

practical purposes the phrases must mean either those 
whom their neighbours think wisest and best — in which 
case the ultimate test of democracy is conceded — or those 
who think themselves wisest and best : which latter is 
what in the mouths of such advocates it usually does 
mean. Thus those to whom the Divine Right of the 
conceited makes no appeal are forced back on the Jeffer- 
sonian formula. Let it be noted that that formula does 
not mean that the people are always right or that a people 
cannot collectively do deliberate injustice or commit 
sins — indeed, inferentially it implies that possibility — but 
it means that there is on earth no temporal authority 
superior to the general will of a community. 

It is, however, no part of the function of this book 
to argue the propositions contained in the Declaration of 
Independence. It is merely necessary to chronicle the 
historical fact that Jefferson, as mouthpiece of the Con- 
tinental Congress, put forward these propositions as self- 
evident, and that all America, looking at them, accepted 
them as such. On that acceptance, the intensity and 
ardent conviction of which showed itself as will pres- 
ently be seen in a hundred ways, the American Common- 
wealth is built. In the modern haze of doubt and amid 
the denial of all necessary things, there have been found 
plenty of sophists, even in America, to dispute these 
great truisms. But if the American nation as a whole 
ever ceases to believe in them, it will not merely decay, 
as all nations decay when they lose touch with eternal 
truths ; it will drop suddenly dead. 

We must now turn back a little in time in order to 
make clear the military situation as it stood when Jeffer- 
son's "Declaration" turned the war into a war of doc- 
trines. 

The summer of 1775 saw the first engagement which 



ARMS AND THE RIGHTS OF MAN 55 

could well be dignified with the name of a battle. A 
small English force had been sent to Boston with the 
object of coercing the recalcitrant state of Massachusetts. 
It was absolutely insufficient, as the event showed, even 
for that purpose, and before it had landed it was appar- 
ent that its real task would be nothing less than the 
conquest of America. The Massachusetts rebels wisely 
determined to avoid a combat with the guns of the Brit- 
ish fleet; they abandoned the city and entrenched them- 
selves in a strong position in the neighbourhood known 
as Bunker Hill. The British army marched out of 
Boston to dislodge them. This they eventually suc- 
ceeded in doing; and those who regard war as a game 
like billiards t© be settled by scoring points may claim 
Bunker Hill as a British victory. But it produced all 
the consequences of a defeat. The rebel army was not 
destroyed; it was even less weakened than the force op- 
posed to it. It retired in good order to a position some- 
what further back, and the British force had no option 
but to return to Boston with its essential work undone. 
For some time England continued to hold Boston, but 
the State of Massachusetts remained in American hands. 
At last, in the absence of any hope of any effective ac- 
tion, the small English garrison withdrew, leaving the 
original prize of war to the rebels. 

On the eve of this indecisive contest the American 
Congress met to consider the selection of a commander- 
in-chief for the revolutionary armies. Their choice fell 
on General George Washington, a Virginian soldier who, 
as has been remarked, had served with some distinction 
in the French wars. 

The choice was a most fortunate one. America and 
England have agreed to praise Washington's character 
so highly that at the hands of the young and irreverent 



56 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

he is in some danger of the fate of Aristides. For the 
benefit of those who tend to weary of the Cherry Tree 
and the Little Hatchet, it may be well to say that Wash- 
ington was a very typical Southern gentleman in his 
foibles as well as in his virtues. Though his temper was 
in large matters under strict control, it was occasionally 
formidable and vented itself in a free and cheerful pro- 
fanity. He loved good wine, and like most eighteenth- 
century gentlemen, was not sparing in its use. He had 
a Southerner's admiration for the other sex — an admira- 
tion which, if gossip may be credited, was not always 
strictly confined within monogamic limits. He had also, 
in large measure, the high dignity and courtesy of his 
class, and an enlarged liberality of temper which usually 
goes with such good breeding. There is no story of him 
more really characteristic than that of his ceremoniously 
returning the salute of an aged negro and saying to a 
friend who was disposed to deride his actions: "Would 
you have me let a poor ignorant coloured man say that he 
had better manners than I?" For the rest the tradi- 
tional eulogy of his public character is not undeserved. 
It may justly be said of him, as it can be said of few 
of the great men who have moulded the destinies of 
nations, that history can put its finger on no act of his 
and say : "Here this man was preferring his own interest 
to his country's." 

As a military commander Washington ranks high. 
He had not, indeed, the genius of a Marlborough or a 
Napoleon. Rather he owed his success to a thorough 
grasp of his profession combined with just that remark- 
ably level and unbiassed judgment which distinguished 
his conduct of civil affairs. He understood very clearly 
the conditions of the war in which he was to engage. 
He knew that Great Britain, as soon as she really woke 



ARMS AND THE RIGHTS OF MAN 57 

up to the seriousness of her peril, would send out a 
formidable force of well-disciplined professional sol- 
diers, and that at the hands of such a force no mere levy 
of enthusiastic volunteers could expect anything but de- 
feat. The breathing space which the incredible supine- 
ness of the British Government allowed him enabled him 
to form something like a real army. Throughout the 
campaigns that followed his primary object was not to 
win victories, but to keep that army in being. So long 
as it existed, he knew that it could be continually rein- 
forced by the enthusiasm of the colonials, and that the 
recruits so obtained could be consolidated into and im- 
bued with the spirit of a disciplined body. The moment 
it ceased to exist Great Britain would have to deal simply 
with rebellious populations, and Washington was soldier 
enough to know that an army can always in time break 
up and keep down a mere population, however eager and 
courageous. 

And now England at last did what, if she were deter- 
mined to enforce her will upon the colonies, she ought 
to have done at least five years before. She sent out an 
army on a scale at least reasonably adequate to the busi- 
ness for which it was designed. It consisted partly of 
excellent British troops and partly of those mercenaries 
whom the smaller German princes let out for hire to 
those who chose to employ them. It was commanded 
by Lord Howe. The objective of the new invasion — * 
for the procrastination of the British Government had 
allowed the war to assume that character — was the city 
of New York. 

New York harbour possesses, as any one who enters it 
can see, excellent natural defences. Manhattan Island, 
upon which the city is built, lies at the mouth of the 
Hudson between two arms of that river. At the estuary 



58 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

are a number of small islets well suited for the emplace- 
ment of powerful guns. The southern bank runs north- 
ward into a sharp promontory, at the end of which now 
stands the most formidable of American fortresses. 
The northern approach is covered by Long Island. The 
British command decided on the reduction of Long 
Island as a preliminary to an assault upon the city. The 
island is long and narrow, and a ridge of high ground 
runs down it like a backbone. This ridge Washington's 
army sought to hold against the attack of the British 
forces. It was the first real battle of the war, and it 
resulted in a defeat so overwhelming that it might well 
have decided the fate of America had not Washington, 
as soon as he saw how the day was going, bent all his 
energies to the tough task of saving his army. It nar- 
rowly escaped complete destruction, but ultimately a 
great part succeeded, though with great loss and not a 
little demoralization, in reaching Brooklyn in safety. 

The Americans still held New York, the right bank of 
the Hudson ; but their flank was dangerously threatened, 
and Washington, true to his policy, preferred the damag- 
ing loss of New York to the risk of his army. He 
retired inland, again offered battle, was again defeated 
and forced back into Pennsylvania. So decided did the 
superiority of the Britsh army prove to be that even- 
tually Philadelphia itself, then the capital of the Con- 
federacy, had to be abandoned. 

Meanwhile another British army under the command 
of General Burgoyne held Canada. That province had 
shown no disposition to join in the revolt; an early at- 
tempt on the part of the rebels to invade it had been 
successfully repelled. Besides English and German 
troops, Burgoyne had the aid of several tribes of Indian 
auxiliaries, whose aid the British Government had been 



ARMS AND THE RIGHTS OF MAN 59 

at some pains to secure — a policy denounced by Chatham 
in a powerful and much-quoted speech. Burgoyne was 
a clever and imaginative though not a successful soldier. 
He conceived and suggested to his Government a plan 
of campaign which was sound in strategic principle, 
which might well have succeeded, and which, if it had 
succeeded, would have dealt a heavy and perhaps a de- 
cisive blow to American hopes. How far its failure is 
to be attributed to his own faulty execution, and how 
far to the blunders of the Home Government and how 
far to accidents which the best general cannot always 
avoid, is still disputed. But that failure was certainly 
the turning-point of the war. 

Burgoyne's project was this. He proposed to advance 
from Canada and push across the belt of high land which 
forms the northern portion of what is now New York 
State, until he struck the upper Hudson. Howe was at 
the same time to advance northward up the Hudson, join 
hands with him and cut the rebellion in two. 

It was a good plan. The cutting off and crushing of 
one isolated district after another is just the fashion in 
which widespread insurrectionary movements have most 
generally been suppressed by military force. The Gov- 
ernment accepted it, but, owing as it would seem to the 
laziness or levity of the English ministers involved, in- 
structions never reached Howe until it was too late for 
him to give effective support to his colleague. All, 
however, might have prospered had Burgoyne been able 
to move more rapidly. His first stroke promised well. 
The important fort of Ticonderoga was surprised and 
easily captured, and the road was open for his soldiers 
into the highlands. But that advance proved disas- 
trously slow. Weeks passed before he approached the 
Hudson. His supplies were running short, and when he 



60 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

reached Saratoga, instead of joining hands with Howe 
he found himself confronted by strongly posted Ameri- 
can forces, greatly outnumbering his own ill-sustained 
and exhausted army. Seeing no sign of the relief which 
he had expected to the south — though as a fact Howe 
had by this time learnt of the expedition and was hasten- 
ing to his assistance — on October 7, 1777, he and his, 
army surrendered to the American commander, General 
Gates. 

The effect of Burgoyne's surrender was great in 
America; to those whose hopes had been dashed by the 
disaster of Long Island, the surrender of New York and 
Washington's enforced retreat it brought not only a 
revival of hope but a definite confidence in ultimate suc- 
cess. But that effect was even greater in Europe. Its 
immediate fruit was Lord North's famous "olive 
branch" of 1778; the decision of the British Government 
to accept defeat on the original issue of the war, and to 
agree to a surrender of the claim to tax the colonists on 
condition of their return to their allegiance. Such a 
proposition made three years earlier would certainly have 
produced immediate peace. Perhaps it might have pro- 
duced peace, even as it was — though it is unlikely, for 
the declaration had filled men's souls with a new hunger 
for pure democracy — if the Americans had occupied the 
same isolated position which was theirs when the war 
began. But it was not in London alone that Saratoga 
had produced its effect. While it decided the wavering 
councils of the British Ministry in favour of concessions, 
it also decided the wavering councils of the French 
Crown in favour of intervention. 

As early as 1776 a mission had been sent to Versailles 
to solicit on behalf of the colonists the aid of France. 
Its principal member was Benjamin Franklin, the one 



ARMS AND THE RIGHTS OF MAN 61 

revolutionary leader of the first rank who came from 
the Northern colonies. He had all the shrewdness and 
humour of the Yankee with an enlarged intelligence and 
a wide knowledge of men which made him an almost 
ideal negotiator in such a cause. Yet for some time 
his mission hung fire. France had not forgotten her 
expulsion from the North American continent twenty 
years before. She could not but desire the success of 
the colonists and the weakening or dismemberment of 
the British Empire. Moreover, French public opinion — 
and- its power under the Monarchy, though insufficient, 
was far greater than is now generally understood — full 
of the new ideals which were to produce the Revolution, 
was warmly in sympathy with the rebellion. But, on 
the other hand, an open breach with England involved 
serious risks. France was only just recovering from 
the effects of a great war in which she had on the whole 
been worsted, and very decidedly worsted in the colonial 
field. The revolt of the English colonies might seem 

, a tempting opportunity for revenge; but suppose that 
the colonial resistance collapsed before effective aid could 

i arrive ? Suppose the colonists merely used the threat of 
French intervention to extort terms from England and 
then made common cause against the foreigner? These 
obvious considerations made the French statesmen hesi- 
tate. Aid was indeed given to the colonial rebels, espe- 

. cially in the very valuable form of arms and munitions, 

i but it was given secretly and unofficially with the satirist 
Beaumarchais, clever, daring, unscrupulous and ready to 

( push his damaged fortunes in any fashion, as unaccred- 

I ited go-between. But in the matter of open alliance 
with the rebels against the British Government France 
temporized, nor could the utmost efforts of Franklin and 

j his colleagues extort a decision. 



62 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

Saratoga extorted it. On the one hand it removed a 
principal cause of hesitation. After such a success it was 
unlikely that the colonists would tamely surrender. On 
the other it made it necessary to take immediate action. 
And Lord North's attitude showed clearly that the British 
Government was ready to make terms with the colonists. 
It was clearly in the interests of France that those terms 
should be refused. She must venture something to 
make sure of such a refusal. With little hesitation the 
advisers of the French Crown determined to take the 
plunge. They acknowledged the revolted colonies as 
independent states, and entered into a defensive alliance 
with these states against Great Britain. That recogni- 
tion and alliance immediately determined the issue of 
the war. What would have happened if it had been 
withheld cannot be certainly determined. It seems not 
unlikely that the war would have ended as the South 
African war ended, in large surrenders of the substance 
of Imperial power in return for a theoretic acknowledg- 
ment of its authority. But all this is speculative. The 
practical fact is that England found herself in the mid- 
dle of a laborious and, so far on the whole, unsuccessful 
effort to crush the rebellion of her colonies, confronted 
by a war with France, which, through the close alliance 
then existing between the two Bourbon monarchies, soon 
became a war with both France and Spain. This change 
converted the task of subjugation from a difficult but 
practicable one, given sufficient time and determination, 
to one fundamentally impossible. 

Yet, so far as the actual military situation was con- 
cerned, there were no darker days for the Americans 
than those which intervened betwen the promise of 
French help and its fulfilment. Lord Cornwallis had 
appeared in the South and had taken possession of 



ARMS AND THE RIGHTS OF MAN 63 

Charlestown, the capital of South Carolina. In that 
State the inhabitants were less unanimous than else- 
where. The "Tories," as the local adherents of the 
English Crown were called, had already attempted a 
rebellion against the rebellion, but had been forced to 
yield to the Republic majority backed by the armies of 
Washington. The presence of Cornwallis revived their 
courage. They boasted in Tarleton, able, enterprising 
and imperious, an excellent commander for the direction 
of irregular warfare, whose nam 2 and that of the squad- 
ron of horse which he raised and organized became to 
the rebels what the names of Claverhouse and his dra- 
goons were to the Covenanters. Cornwallis and Tarle- 
ton between them completely reduced the Carolinas, save 
for the strip of mountainous country to the north, 
wherein many of those families that Tarleton had 
"burnt out" found refuge and proceeded to overrun 
Georgia. Only two successes encouraged the rebels. 
At the Battle of the Cowpens Tarleton having, with the 
recklessness which was the defeat of his qualities as a 
leader, advanced too far into the hostile country, was 
met and completely defeated by Washington. The de- 
feat produced little immediate result, but it was the one 
| definite military success which the American general 
1 achieved before the advent of the French, and it helped 
j to keep up the spirit of the insurgents. Perhaps even 
j greater in its moral effect was the other victory, which 
' from the military point of view was even more insignifi- 
cant. In Sumter and Marion the rebels found two cav- 
I airy leaders fully as daring and capable as Tarleton him- 
self. The latter formed from among the refugees who 
had sought the shelter of the Carolinian hills a troop of 
(horse with which he made a sudden raid upon the con- 
quered province and broke the local Tories at the Battle 



64 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

of the Hanging Rock. It was a small affair so far as 
numbers went, and Marion's troopers were a handful of 
irregulars drawn as best might be from the hard-riding, 
sharp-shooting population of the South. Many of them 
were mere striplings; indeed, among them was a boy of 
thirteen, an incorrigible young rebel who had run away 
from school to take part in the fighting. In the course 
of this narration it will be necessary to refer to that boy 
again more than once. His name was Andrew Jackson. 
While there was so little in the events of the Southern 
campaign to bring comfort to the rebels, in the North 
their cause suffered a mortal blow which was felt at the 
moment to be almost as grave as a military disaster. 
Here the principal American force was commanded by 
one of the ablest soldiers the Rebellion had produced, a 
man who might well have disputed the pre-eminent fame 
of Washington if he had not chosen rather to challenge 
— and with no contemptible measure of success — that 
of Iscariot. Benedict Arnold was, like Washington, a 
professional soldier whose talent had been recognized be- 
fore the war. He had early embraced the revolutionary 
cause, and had borne a brilliant part in the campaign which 
ended in the surrender of Burgoyne. There seemed be- 
fore him every prospect of a glorious career. The motives 
which led him to the most inexpiable of human crimes 
were perhaps mixed, though all of them were poisonous. 
He was in savage need of money to support the extrava- 
gance of his private tastes : the Confederacy had none to 
give, while the Crown had plenty. But it seems also that 
his ravenous vanity had been wounded, first by the fact 
that the glory of Burgoyne's defeat had gone to Gates 
and not to him, and afterwards by a censure, temperate 
and tactful enough and accompanied by a liberal eulogy 
of his general conduct, which Washington had felt 



ARMS AND THE RIGHTS OF MAN 65 

obliged to pass on certain of his later military proceed- 
ings. At any rate, the "ingratitude" of his country was 
the reason he publicly alleged for his treason ; and those 
interested in the psychology of infamy may give it such 
weight as it may seem to deserve. For history the im- 
portant fact is that Arnold at this point in the campaign 
secretly offered his services to the English, and the offer 
was accepted. 

Arnold escaped to the British camp and was safe. The 
unfortunate gentleman on whom patriotic duty laid the 
unsavoury task of trafficking with the traitor was less 
fortunate. Major Andre had been imprudent enough to 
pay a visit to a spot behind the American lines, and, at 
Arnold's suggestion, to do so in plain clothes. He was 
taken, tried, and hanged as 'a spy. Though espionage 
was not his intention, the Americans cannot fairly be 
blamed for deciding that he should die. He had un- 
doubtedly committed an act which was the act of a spy in 
the eyes of military law. It is pretty certain that a hint 
was given that the authorities would gladly exchange 
him for Arnold, and it is very probable that the unslaked 
thirst for just vengeance against Arnold was partly re- 
sponsible for the refusal of the American commanders to 
show mercy. Andre's courage and dignity made a pro- 
found impression on them, and there was a strong dis- 
position to comply with his request that he should at least 
be shot instead of hanged. But to that concession a 
I strong and indeed irresistible objection was urged. What- 
ever the Americans did was certain to be scanned with 
I critical and suspicious eyes. Little could be said in the 
, face of the facts if they treated Andre as a spy and in- 
j flicted on him the normal fate of a spy. But if they 
j showed that they scrupled to hang him as a spy, it would 
] be easy to say that they had shot a prisoner of war. 



66 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

Arnold was given a command in the South, and the 
rage of the population of that region was raised and be- 
came something like torment when they saw their lands 
occupied and their fields no longer devastated by a 
stranger from overseas who was but fulfilling his mili- 
tary duty, but by a cynical and triumphant traitor. Vir- 
ginia was invaded and a bold stroke almost resulted in the 
capture of the author of the Declaration of Independence 
himself, who had been elected Governor of that State. 
In the course of these raids many abominable things 
were done which it is unnecessary to chronicle here. The 
regular English troops, on the whole, behaved reason- 
ably well, but Tarleton's native "Tories" were inflamed 
by a fanaticism far fiercer than theirs, while atrocity 
was of course normal to the warfare of the barbarous 
mercenaries of England, whether Indian or German. It 
is equally a matter of course that such excesses provoked 
frequent reprisals from the irregular colonial levies. 

But aid was at last at hand. Already Lafayette, a 
young French noble of liberal leanings, had appeared in 
Washington's camp at the head of a band of volunteers, 
and the success, small as it was, led to a distinct revival 
of the fortunes of the revolution of the South. It was, 
however, but a beginning. England, under pressure of 
the war with France and Spain, lost that absolute suprem- 
acy at sea which has ever been and ever will be neces- 
sary to her conduct of a successful war. A formidable 
French armament was able to cross the Atlantic. A 
French fleet threatened the coasts. Cornwallis, not know- 
ing at which point the blow would fall, was compelled 
to withdraw his forces from the country they had over- 
run, and to concentrate them in a strong position in the 
peninsula of Yorktown. Here he was threatened on 
both sides by Washington and Rochambeau, while the 



ARMS AND THE RIGHTS OF MAN 67 

armada of De Grasse menaced him from the sea. The 
war took on the character of a siege. His resources were 
speedily exhausted, and on October 19, 1781, he sur- 
rendered. 

It was really the end of the war so far as America was 
concerned, though the struggle between England and 
France continued for a time with varying fortunes in 
other theatres, and the Americans, though approached 
with tempting offers, wisely as well as righteously re- 
fused to make a separate peace at the expense of their 
Allies. But the end could no longer be in doubt. The 
surrender of Burgoyne had forced North to make conces- 
sions; the surrender of Cornwallis made his resignation 
inevitable. A new ministry was formed under Rocking- 
ham pledged to make peace. Franklin again went to 
Paris as representative of the Confederation and showed 
himself a diplomatist of the first rank. To the firmness 
with which he maintained the Alliance against the most 
skilful attempts to dissolve it must largely be attributed 
the successful conclusion of a general peace on terms 
favourable to the allies and especially favourable to 
America. Britain recognized the independence of her 
thirteen revolted colonies, and peace was restored. 

I have said that England recognized her thirteen re- 
volted colonies. She did not recognize the American 
P.epublic, for as yet there was none to recognize. The 
Lvar had been conducted on the American side nominally 
by the Continental Congress, an admittedly ad hoc au- 
hority not pretending to permanency, really by Washing- 
on and his army which, with the new flag symbolically 
mblazoned with thirteen stars and thirteen stripes, was 
>he one rallying point of unity. That also was now to 
pe dissolved. The States had willed to be free, and they 
jvere free. Would they, in their freedom, will effectively 



68 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

to be a nation ? That was a question which not the wis- 
est observer could answer at the time, and which was not 
perhaps fully answered until well within the memory of 
men still living. Its solution will necessarily form the 
main subject of this book. 



CHAPTER III 



WE, THE PEOPLE 



An account of the American Revolution which took 
cognizance only of the armed conflict with England would 
tell much less than half the truth, and even that half 
would be misleading. If any one doubts that the real 
inspiration which made America a nation was drawn, 
not from Whiggish quarrels about taxes, but from the 
great dogmas promulgated by Jefferson, it is sufficient 
to point out that the States did not even wait till their 
victory over England was assured before effecting a com- 
plete internal revolution on the basis of those dogmas. 
Before the last shot had been fired almost the last privi- 
lege had disappeared. 

The process was a spontaneous one, and its fruits ap- 
pear almost simultaneously in every state. They can 
be followed best in Virginia, where Jefferson himself 
took the lead in the work of revolutionary reform. 

Hereditary titles and privileges went first. On this 
point public feeling became so strong that the proposal 
to form after the war a society to be called "the Cin- 
cinnati," which was to consist of those who had taken 
a prominent part in the war and afterwards of their 
descendants, was met, in spite of the respect in which 
Washington and the other military heroes were held, 
with so marked an expression of public disapproval that 
the hereditary part of the scheme had to be dropped. 

Franchises were simplified, equalized, broadened, so 

69 



70 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

that in practically every state the whole adult male pop- 
ulation of European race received the suffrage. Social 
and economic reforms having the excellent aim of secur- 
ing and maintaining a wide distribution of property, es- 
pecially of land, were equally prominent among the 
achievements of that time. Jefferson himself carried in 
Virginia a drastic code of Land Laws, which anticipated 
many of the essential provisions which through the Code 
of Nelson revolutionized the system of land-owning in 
Europe. As to the practical effect of such reforms we 
have the testimony of a man whose instinct for referring 
all things to practice was, if anything, an excess, and 
whose love for England was the master passion of his 
life. "Every object almost that strikes my view," wrote 
William Cobbett many years later, "sends my mind and 
heart back to England. In viewing the ease and happi- 
ness of this people the contrast fills my soul with in- 
dignation, and makes it more and more the object of my 
life to assist in the destruction of the diabolical usurpa- 
tion which has trampled on king as well as people." 

Another principle, not connected by any direct logic 
with democracy and not set forth in the Declaration of 
Independence, was closely associated with the democratic 
thesis by the great French thinkers by whom that thesis 
was revived, and had a strong hold upon the mind of 
Jefferson — the principle of religious equality, or, as it 
might be more exactly defined, of the Secular State. 

So many loose and absurd interpretations of this 
principle have been made and are daily being pro- 
pounded, that it may be well to state succinctly what it 
does and does not mean. 

It does not mean that any one may commit any anti- 
social act that appeals to him, and claim immunity from 
the law on the ground that he is impelled to that act by 



"WE, THE PEOPLE" 71 

his religion : can rob as a conscientious communist, mur- 
der as a conscientious Thug, or refuse military service as 
a conscientious objector. None understood better than 
Jefferson — it was the first principle of his whole political 
system — that there must be some basis of agreement 
amongst citizens as to what is right and what is wrong, 
and that what the consensus of citizens regards as wrong 
must be punished by the law. All that the doctrine of 
the Secular State asserted was that such general agree- 
ment among citizens need not include, as in most modern 
states it obviously does not include, an agreement on the 
subject of religion. Religion is, so to speak, left out of 
the Social Contract, and consequently each individual 
retains his natural liberty to entertain and promulgate 
what views he likes concerning it, so long as such views 
do not bring him into conflict with those general princi- 
ples of morality, patriotism and social order upon which 
the citizens of the State are agreed, and which form the 
basis of its laws. 

The public mind of America was for the most part 
well prepared for the application of this principle. We 
have already noted how the first experiment in the purely 
secular organization of society had been made in the 
Catholic colony of Maryland and the Quaker colony of 
Pennsylvania. The principle was now applied in its 
completeness to one State after another. The Episcopa- 
lian establishment of Jefferson's own State was the first 
to fall; the other States soon followed the example of 
Virginia. 

At the same time penalties or disabilities imposed as 
a consequence of religious opinions were everywhere 
abrogated. Only in New England was there any hesita- 
tion. The Puritan States did not take kindly to the idea 
of tolerating Popery. In the early days of the revolu- 



72 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

tion their leaders had actually made it one of the counts 
of their indictment against the British Government that 
that Government had made peace with Anti-Christ in 
French Canada — a fact remembered to the permanent 
hurt of the Confederacy when the French Canadians were 
afterwards invited to make common cause with the Amer- 
ican rebels. But the side was too strong even for Cal- 
vinists to resist; the equality of all religions before the 
law was recognized in every State, and became, as it 
remains to-day, a fundamental part of the American 
Constitution. 

It may be added that America affords the one con- 
spicuous example of the Secular State completely suc- 
ceeding. In France, where the same principles were ap- 
plied under the same inspiration, the ultimate result was 
something wholly different : an organized Atheism perse- 
cuting the Christian Faith. In England the principle 
has never been avowedly applied at all. In theory the 
English State still professes the form of Protestant Chris- 
tianity defined in the Prayer-book, and "tolerates" dis- 
senters from it as the Christian states of the middle ages 
tolerated the Jews, and as in France, during the interval 
between the promulgation of the Edict of Nantes and its 
revocation, a state definitely and even pronouncedly 
Catholic tolerated the Huguenots. Each dissentient re- 
ligious body claims its right to exist in virtue of some 
specific Act of Parliament. Theoretically it is still an 
exception, though the exceptions have swallowed the 
rule. 

Moreover, even under this rather hazy toleration, those 
who believe either more or less than the bulk of their 
fellow-countrymen and who boldly proclaim their belief 
usually find themselves at a political disadvantage. In 
America it never seems to have been so. Jefferson him- 



"WE, THE PEOPLE" 73 

self, a Deist (the claim sometimes made that he was a 
"Christian" seems to rest on nothing more solid than the 
fact that, like nearly all the eighteenth-century Deists, he 
expressed admiration for the character and teaching of 
Jesus Christ), never for a moment forfeited the confi- 
dence of his countrymen on that account, though attempts 
were made, notably by John Adams, to exploit it against 
him. Taney, a Catholic, was raised without objection on 
that score to the first judicial post in America, at a date 
when such an appointment would have raised a serious 
tumult in England. At a later date Ingersoll was able to 
vary the pastime of "Bible-smashing" with the profes- 
sion of an active Republican wire-puller, without any of 
the embarrassments which that much better and honester 
man, Charles Bradlaugh, had to encounter. The Ameri- 
can Republic has not escaped the difficulties and problems 
which are inevitable to the Secular State, when some of 
its citizens profess a religion which brings them out in 
conflict with the common system of morals which the 
nation takes for granted; the case of the Mormons is a 
typical example of such a problem. But there is some 
evidence that, as the Americans have applied the doctrine 
far more logically than we, they have also a keener per- 
ception of the logic of its limitations. At any rate, it is 
notable that Congress has refused, in its Conscription 
Act, to follow our amazing example and make the con- 
science of the criminal the judge of the validity of legal 
proceedings against him. 

Changes so momentous, made in so drastic and sweep- 
ing a fashion in the middle of a life and death struggle 
for national existence, show how vigorous and compel- 
ling was the popular impulse towards reform. Yet all 
the great things that were done seem dwarfed by one 
enormous thing left undone; the heroic tasks which the 



74 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

Americans accomplished are forgotten in the thought of 
the task which stared them in the face, but from which 
they, perhaps justifiably, shrank. All the injustices which 
were abolished in that superb crusade against privilege 
only made plainer the shape of the one huge privilege, 
the one typical injustice which still stood — the blacker 
against such a dawn — negro slavery. 

It has already been mentioned that slavery was at one 
time universal in the English colonies and was generally 
approved by American opinion, North and South. Be- 
fore the end of the War of Independence it was almost 
as generally disapproved, and in all States north of the 
borders of Maryland it soon ceased to exist. 

This was not because democratic ideals were more de- 
votedly cherished in the North than in the South; on 
the whole the contrary was the case. But the institution 
of slavery was in no way necessary to the normal life and 
industry of the North; its abrogation made little differ- 
ence, and the rising tide of the new ideas to which it was 
necessarily odious easily swept it away. In their method 
of dealing with it the Northerners, it must be owned, 
were kinder to themselves than to the negroes. They 
declared slavery illegal within their own borders, but they 
generally gave the slave-holder time to dispose of his 
human property by selling it in the States where slavery 
still existed. This fact is worth noting, because it be- 
came a prime cause of resentment and bitterness when, at 
a later date, the North began to reproach the South with 
the guilt of slave-owning. For the South was faced with 
no such easy and manageable problem. Its coloured pop- 
ulation was almost equal in number to its white colonists ; 
in some districts it was even greatly preponderant. Its 
staple industries were based on slave labour. To abolish 
slavery would mean an industrial revolution of stagger- 



"WE, THE PEOPLE" 75 

ing magnitude of which the issue could not be foreseen. 
And even if that were faced, there remained the sinister 
and apparently insoluble problem of what to do with the 
emancipated negroes. Jefferson, who felt the reproach 
of slavery keenly, proposed to the legislature of Virginia 
a scheme so radical and comprehensive in its character 
that it is not surprising if men less intrepid than he re- 
fused to adopt it. He proposed nothing less than the 
wholesale repatriation of the blacks, who were to set up 
in Africa a Negro Republic of their own under Ameri- 
can protection. Jefferson fully understood the principles 
and implications of democracy, and he was also thorough- 
ly conversant with Southern conditions, and the fact that 
he thought (and events have certainly gone far to jus- 
tify him) that so drastic a solution was the only one that 
offered hope of a permanent and satisfactory settlement, 
is sufficient evidence that the problem was no easy one. 
For the first time Jefferson failed to carry Virginia with 
him; and slavery remained an institution sanctioned by 
law in every State south of the Mason-Dixon Line. 

While the States were thus dealing with the problems 
raised by the application to their internal administration 
of the principles of the new democratic creed, the force 
of mere external fact was compelling them to attempt 
some sort of permanent unity. Those who had from 
the first a specific enthusiasm for such unity were few, 
though Washington was among them, and his influence 
counted for much. But what counted for much more 
was the pressure of necessity. It was soon obvious to all 
clear-sighted men, that unless some authoritative centre 
of union were created the revolutionary experiment 
would have been saved from suppression by arms only to 
collapse in mere anarchic confusion. The Continental 
Congress, the only existing authority, was moribund, and 



76 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

even had it been still in its full vigour, it had not the 
powers which the situation demanded. It could not, for 
instance, levy taxes on the State ; its revenues were com- 
pletely exhausted and it had no power to replenish them. 
The British Government complained that the conditions 
of peace were not observed on the American side, and 
accordingly held on to the positions which it had occu- 
pied at the conclusion of the war. The complaint was 
perfectly just, but it did not arise from deliberate bad 
faith on the part of those who directed (as far as any 
one was directing) American policy, but from the simple 
fact that there was no authority in America capable of 
enforcing obedience and carrying the provisions of the 
treaty into effect. The same moral was enforced by a 
dozen other symptoms of disorder. The Congress had 
disbanded the soldiers, as had been promised, on the con- 
clusion of peace, but, having no money, could not keep 
its at least equally important promise to pay them. This 
led to much casual looting by men with arms in their 
hands but nowhere to turn for a meal, and the trouble 
culminated in a rebellion raised in New England by an 
old soldier of the Continental Army called Shays. Such 
incidents as these were the immediate cause of the sum- 
moning at Philadelphia of a Convention charged with the 
task of forming a Constitution of the United States. 

Of such a Convention Washington was the only pos- 
sible President ; and he was drawn from a temporary and 
welcome retirement in his Virginian home to re-enter in 
a new fashion the service of his country. Under his 
presidency disputed and compromised a crowd of able 
men representative of the widely divergent States whose 
union was to be attempted. There was Alexander Ham- 
ilton, indifferent or hostile to the democratic idea but in- 
tensely patriotic, and bent above all things upon the for- 



"WE, THE PEOPLE" 77 

mation of a strong central authority; Franklin with his 
acute practicality and his admirable tact in dealing with 
men; Gerry, the New Englander, Whiggish and some- 
what distrustful of the populace; Pinckney of South Car- 
olina, a soldier and the most ardent of the Federalists, 
representing, by a curious irony, the State which was to 
be the home of the most extreme dogma of State Rights; 
Madison, the Virginian, young, ardent and intellectual, 
his head full of the new wine of liberty. One great name 
is lacking. Jefferson had been chosen to represent the 
Confederacy at the French Court, where he had the de- 
light of watching the first act of that tremendous drama, 
whereby his own accepted doctrine was to re-shape 
France, as it had already re-shaped America. The Con- 
vention, therefore, lacked the valuable combination of 
lucid thought on the philosophy of politics and a keen 
appreciation of the direction of the popular will which he 
above all men could have supplied. 

The task before the Convention was a hard and peril- 
ous one, and nothing about it was more hard and perilous 
than its definition. What were they there to do ? Were 
they framing a treaty between independent Sovereignties, 
which, in spite of the treaty, would retain their independ- 
ence, or were they building a nation by merging these 
Sovereignties in one general Sovereignty of the American 
people? They began by proceeding as the first assump- 
tion, re-modelling the Continental Congress — avowedly 
a mere alliance — and adding only such powers as it was t 
plainly essential to add. They soon found that such a 
plan would not meet the difficulties of the hour. But they 
dared not openly adopt the alternative theory : the States 
would not have borne it. Had it, for example, been 
specifically laid down that a State once entering the 
Union might never after withdraw from it, quite half the 



78 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

States would have refused to enter it. To that extent the 
position afterwards taken up by the Southern Secession- 
ists was historically sound. But there was a complemen- 
tary historical truth on the other side. There can be 
little doubt that in this matter the founders of the Repub- 
lic desired and intended more than they ventured to at- 
tempt. The fact that men of unquestionable honesty and 
intelligence were in after years so sharply and sincerely 
divided as to what the Constitution really was. was in 
truth the result of a divided mind in those who framed 
the Constitution. They made an alliance and hoped it 
would grow into a nation. The preamble of the Consti- 
tution represents the aspirations of the American fathers; 
the clauses represent the furthest they dared towards 
those aspirations. The preamble was therefore always 
the rallying point of those who wished to see America 
one nation. Its operative clause ran, "We, the People 
of the United States, in order to form a more perfect 
Union, ... do ordain and establish this Constitution 
for the United States of America." That such language 
was a strong point in favour of the Federalist interpret- 
ers of the Constitution was afterwards implicitly ad- 
mitted by the extreme exponents of State Sovereignty 
themselves, for when they came to frame for their own 
Confederacy a Constitution reflecting their own views 
they made a more significant alteration. The correspond- 
ing clause in the Constitution of the Southern Confed- 
eracy ran, "We, the deputies of the Sovereign and Inde- 
pendent States, ... do ordain," etc., etc. 

For the rest two great practical measures which in- 
volved no overbold challenge to State Sovereignty were 
wisely planned to buttress the Union and render it per- 
manent. A clause in the Constitution forbade tariffs be- 
tween the States and established complete Free Trade 



"WE, THE PEOPLE" 79 

within the limits of the Union. An even more important 
step was that by which the various States which claimed 
territory in the as yet undeveloped interior were induced 
to surrender such territory to the collective ownership 
of the Federation. This at once gave the States a new 
motive for unity, a common inheritance which any State 
refusing or abandoning union must surrender. 

Meanwhile it would be unjust to the supporters of 
State Rights to deny the excellence and importance of 
their contribution to the Constitutional settlement. To 
them is due the establishment of local liberties with safe- 
guards such as no other Constitution gives. And, in 
spite of the military victory which put an end to the dis- 
putes about State Sovereignty and finally established the 
Federalist interpretation of the Constitution, this part of 
their work endures. The internal affairs of every State 
remain as the Constitution left them, absolutely in its 
own control. The Federal Government never interferes 
save for purposes of public taxation, and, in the rare case 
of necessity, of national defence. For the rest nine-tenths 
of the laws under which an American citizen lives, nearly 
all the laws that make a practical difference to his life, 
are State laws. Under the Constitution, as framed, the 
States were free to form their separate State Constitu- 
tions according to their own likings, and to arrange the 
franchise and the test of citizenship, even for Federal 
purposes, in their own fashion. This, with the one stu- 
pid and mischievous exception made by the ill-starred 
Fifteenth Amendment, remains the case to this day, with 
the curious consequence, among others, that it is now 
theoretically possible for a woman to become President 
of the United States, if she is the citizen of a State where 
female suffrage is admitted. 

Turning to the structure of the central authority which 



80 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

the Constitution sought to establish, the first thing that 
strikes us — in the teeth of the assertion of most British 
and some American writers — is that it was emphatically 
not a copy of the British Constitution in any sense what- 
ever. It is built on wholly different principles, drawn 
mostly from the French speculations of that age. Espe- 
cially one notes alongside of the careful and wise separa- 
tion of the judiciary from the executive, the sound prin- 
ciple enunciated by Montesquieu and other French think- 
ers of the eighteenth century, but rejected and contemned 
by England (to her great hurt) as a piece of impracti- 
cable logic — the separation of the executive and legislative 
powers. It was this principle which made possible the 
later transformation of the Presidency into a sort of 
Elective Monarchy. 

This result was not designed or foreseen; or rather 
it was to an extent foreseen, and deliberately though 
unsuccessfully guarded against. The American revolu- 
tionists were almost as much under the influence of 
classical antiquity as the French. From it they drew the 
noble conception of "the Republic," the public thing act- 
ing with impersonal justice towards all citizens. But 
with it they also drew an exaggerated dread of what 
they called "Caesarism," and with it they mixed the curi- 
ous but characteristic illusion of that age — an illusion 
from which, by the way, Rousseau himself was conspicu- 
ously free — that the most satisfactory because the most 
impersonal organ of the general will is to be found in an 
elected assembly. They had as yet imperfectly learnt 
that such an assembly must after all consist of persons, 
more personal because less public than an acknowledged 
ruler. They did not know that while a despot may often 
truly represent the people, a Senate, however chosen, al- 
ways tends to become an oligarchy. Therefore they sur- 



"WE, THE PEOPLE" 81 

rounded the presidential office with checks which in mere 
words made the President seem less powerful than an 
English King. Yet he has always in fact been much more 
powerful. And the reason is to be found in the separa- 
tion of the executive from the legislature. The Presi- 
dent, while his term lasted, had the full powers of a real 
executive. Congress could not turn him out, though it 
could in various ways check his actions. He could ap- 
point his own ministers (though the Senate must ratify 
the choice) and they were wisely excluded from the legis- 
lature. An even wiser provision limited the appointment 
of Members of Congress to positions under the execu- 
tive. Thus both executive and legislature were kept, so 
far as human frailty permitted, pure in their normal 
functions. The Presidency remained a real Government. 
Congress remained a real check. 

In England, where the opposite principle was adopted, 
the Ministry became first the committee of an oligarchi- 
cal parliament and later a close corporation nominating 
the legislature which is supposed to check it. 

The same fear of arbitrary power was exhibited, and 
that in a fashion really inconsistent with the democratic 
principles which the American statesmen professed, in 
the determination that the President should be chosen 
by the people only in an indirect fashion, through an 
Electoral College. This error has been happily overruled 
by events. Since the Electoral College was to be chosen 
ad hoc for the single purpose of choosing a President, it 
soon became obvious that pledges could easily be exacted 
from its members in regard to their choice. By degrees 
the pretence of deliberate action by the College wore 
thinner and thinner. Finally it was abandoned altogether, 
and the President is now chosen, as the first magistrate 
of a democracy ought to be chosen, if election is resorted 



82 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

to at all, by the direct vote of the nation. At the time, 
however, it was supposed that the Electoral College would 
be an independent deliberative assembly. It was fur- 
ther provided that the second choice of the Electoral Col- 
lege should be Vice-President, and succeed to the Presi- 
dency in the event of the President dying during his 
term of office. If there was a "tie" or if no candidate 
had an absolute majority in the College, the election de- 
volved on the House of Representatives voting in this 
instance by the States. 

In connection with the election both of Executive and 
Legislature, the old State Rights problem rose in an- 
other form. Were all the States to have equal weight and 
representation as had been the case in the old Continen- 
tal Congress, or was their weight and representation to 
be proportional to their population? On this point a 
compromise was made. The House of Representatives 
was to be chosen directly by the people on a numerical 
basis, and in the Electoral College which chose the Pres- 
ident the same principle was adopted. In the Senate all 
States were to have equal representation; and the Sena- 
tors were to be chosen by the legislatures of the States, 
and regarded rather as ambassadors than as delegates. 
The term of a Senator was fixed for six years, a third of 
the Senate resigning in rotation every two years. The 
House of Representatives was to be elected in a body 
for two years. The President was elected for four years, 
at the end of which time he could be re-elected. 

Such were the main lines of the compromises which 
were effected between the conflicting views of the ex- 
treme Federalists and extreme State Rights advocates, 
and the conflicting interests of the larger and smaller 
States. But there was another threatened conflict, more 
formidable and, as the event proved, more enduring, 



"WE, THE PEOPLE" 83 

with which the framers of the Constitution had to deal. 
Two different types of civilization had grown up on 
opposite sides of the Mason-Dixon line. How far slav- 
ery was the cause and how far a symptom of this di- 
vergence will be discussed more fully in future chapters. 
At any rate it was its most conspicuous mark or label. 
North and South differed so conspicuously not only in 
their social organization but in every habit of life and 
thought that neither would tamely bear to be engulfed 
in a union in which the other was to be predominant. 
To keep an even balance between them was long the 
principal effort of American statesmanship. That effort 
began in the Convention which framed the Constitution. 
It did not cease till the very eve of the Civil War. 

The problem with which the Convention had to deal 
was defined within certain well-understood limits. No 
one proposed that slavery should be abolished by Fed- 
eral enactment. It was universally acknowledged that 
slavery within a State, however much of an evil it might 
be, was an evil with which State authority alone had a 
right to deal. On the other hand, no one proposed to 
make slavery a national institution. Indeed, all the most 
eminent Southern statesmen of that time, and probably 
the great majority of Southerners, regarded it as a re- 
proach, and sincerely hoped that it would soon disap- 
pear. There remained, however, certain definite subjects 
of dispute concerning which an agreement had to be 
reached if the States were to live in peace in the same 
household. 

First, not perhaps in historic importance, but in the 
insistence of its demand for an immediate settlement, 
was the question of representation. It had been agreed 
that in the House of Representatives and in the Electoral 
College this should be proportionate to population. The 



84 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

urgent question at once arose: should free white citi- 
zens only be counted, or should the count include the 
negro slaves? When it is remembered that these latter 
numbered something like half the population of the 
Southern States, the immediate political importance of 
the issue will at once be recognized. If they were omitted 
the weight of the South in the Federation would be 
halved. In the opposite alternative it would be doubled. 
By the compromise eventually adopted it was agreed that 
the whole white population should be counted and three- 
fifths of the slaves. 

The second problem was this: if slavery was to be 
legal in one State and illegal in another, what was to be 
the status of a slave escaping from a slave State into a 
free? Was such an act to be tantamount to an emanci- 
pation? If such were to be the case, it was obvious that 
slave property, especially in the border States, would be- 
come an extremely insecure investment. The average 
Southerner of that period was no enthusiast for slavery. 
He was not unwilling to listen to plans of gradual and 
compensated emancipation. But he could not be expect- 
ed to contemplate losing in a night property for which 
he had perhaps paid hundreds of dollars, without even 
the hope of recovery. On this point it was found abso- 
lutely necessary to give way to the Southerners, though 
Franklin, for one, disliked this concession more than any 
other. It was determined that "persons held to service 
on labour" escaping into another State should be "re- 
turned to those to whom such service and labour may be 
due." 

The last and on the whole the least defensible of the 
concessions made in this matter concerned the African 
Slave Trade. That odious traffic was condemned by al- 
most all Americans — even by those who were accustomed 



"WE, THE PEOPLE" 85 

to domestic slavery, and could see little evil in it. Jeffer- 
son, in the original draft of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, had placed amongst the accusations against 
the English King the charge that he had forced the slave 
trade on reluctant colonies. The charge was true so far 
at any rate as Virginia was concerned, for both that State 
and its neighbour, Maryland, had passed laws against the 
traffic and had seen them vetoed by the Crown. But the 
extreme South, where the cotton trade was booming, 
wanted more negro labour; South Carolina objected, and 
found an expected ally in New England. Boston had 
profited more by the Slave Trade than any other Ameri- 
can city. She could hardly condemn King George with- 
out condemning herself. And, though her interest in the 
traffic had diminished, it had not wholly ceased. The 
paragraph in question was struck out of the Declaration, 
and when the Convention came to deal with the question 
the same curious alliance thwarted the efforts of those 
who demanded the immediate prohibition of the trade. 
Eventually the slave trade was suffered to continue for 
twenty years, at the end of which time Congress might 
forbid it. This was done in 1808, when the term of 
sufferance had expired. 

Thus was negro slavery placed under the protection of. 
the Constitution. It would be a grave injustice to the 
founders of the American Commonwealth to make it 
seem that any of them liked doing this. Constrained 
by a cruel necessity, they acquiesced for the time in an 
evil which they hoped that time would remedy. Their 
mind is significantly mirrored by the fact that not once 
in the Constitution are the words "slave" or "slavery" 
mentioned. Some euphemism is always used, as "persons 
held to service or labour," "the importation of persons," 
"free persons," contracted with "other persons," and so 



86 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

on. Lincoln, generations later, gave what was undoubt- 
edly the true explanation of this shrinking from the 
name of the thing they were tolerating and even protect- 
ing. They hoped that the Constitution would survive ne- 
gro slavery, and they would leave no word therein to 
remind their children that they had spared it for a sea- 
son. Beyond question they not only hoped but expected 
that the concession which for the sake of the national 
unity they made to an institution which they hated and 
deplored would be for a season only. The influence of 
time and the growth of those great doctrines which were 
embodied in the Declaration of Independence, could not 
but persuade all men at last; and the day, they thought, 
could not be far distant when the slave States themselves 
would concur in some prudent scheme of emancipation, 
and make of negro slavery an evil dream that had passed 
away. None the less not a few of them did what they 
had to do with sorrowful and foreboding hearts, and the 
author of the Declaration of Independence has left on 
record his own verdict, that he trembled for his country 
when he remembered that God was just. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE MANTLE OF WASHINGTON 

The compromises of the Constitution, on whatever 
grounds they may be criticized, were so far justified that 
they gained their end. That end was the achievement 
of union; and union was achieved. This was not done 
easily nor without opposition. In some cities anti-Con- 
stitutional riots took place. Several States refused to 
ratify. The opposition had the support of the great 
name of Patrick Henry, who had been the soul of the 
resistance to the Stamp Act, and who now declared that 
under the specious name of "Federation" Liberty had 
been betrayed. The defence was conducted in a publi- 
cation called The Federalist largely by two men after- 
wards to be associated with fiercely contending parties, 
Alexander Hamilton and James Madison. But more 
persuasive than any arguments that the ablest advocate 
could use were the iron necessities of the situation. The 
Union was an accomplished fact. For any State, and 
especially for a small State — and it was the small States 
that hesitated most — to refuse to enter it would be so 
plainly disastrous to its interests that the strongest ob- 
jections and the most rooted suspicions had eventually 
to give way. Some States hung back long : some did 
not ratify the Constitution until its machinery was ac- 
tually working, until the first President had been chosen 
and the first Congress had met. But all ratified it at last, 

87 



88 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

and before the end of Washington's first Presidency the 
complement of Stars and Stripes was made up. 

The choice of a President was a foregone conclusion. 
Every one knew that Washington was the man whom the 
hour and the nation demanded. He was chosen without 
a contest by the Electoral College, and would undoubt- 
edly have been chosen with the same practical unanimity 
by the people had the choice been theirs. So long as he 
retained his position he retained along with it the virtu- 
ally unchallenged pre-eminence which all men acknowl- 
edged. There had been cabals against him as a general, 
and there were signs of a revival of them when his 
Presidency was clearly foreshadowed. The impulse came 
mostly from the older and wealthier gentry of his own 
State — the Lees for example — who tended to look down 
upon him as a "new man." Towards the end of his po- 
litical life he was to some extent the object of attack 
from the opposite quarter; his fame was assailed by the 
fiercer and less prudent of the Democratic publicists. 
But, throughout, the great mass of the American people 
trusted him as their representative man, and those who 
abused him or conspired against him did so to their own 
hurt. A less prudent man might easily have worn out 
his popularity and alienated large sections of opinion, 
but Washington's characteristic sagacity, which had been 
displayed so constantly during the war, stood him in as 
good stead in matters of civil government. He propiti- 
ated Nemesis and gave no just provocation to any party 
to risk its popularity by attacking him. While he was 
President the mantle of his great fame was ample enough 
to cover the deep and vital divisions which were appear- 
ing even in his own Cabinet, and were soon to convulse 
the nation in a dispute for the inheritance of his power. 

His secretary of the Treasury was Alexander Hamil- 



THE MANTLE OF WASHINGTON 89 

ton. This extraordinary man presents in more than one 
respect a complex problem to the historian. He has an 
unquestionable right to a place and perhaps to a sapreme 
place among the builders of the American Republic, and 
much of its foundation-laying was his work. Yet he 
shows in history as a defeated man, and for at least a 
generation scarcely any one dared to give him credit for 
the great work that he really did. To-day the injustice 
is perhaps the other way. In American histories written 
since the Civil War he is not only acclaimed as a great 
statesman, but his overthrow at the hands of the Jeffer- 
sonians is generally pointed at as a typical example of 
the folly and ingratitude of the mob. This version is at 
least as unjust to the American people as the depreciation 
of the Democrats was to him. The fact is that Hamil- 
ton's work had a double aspect. In so far as it was di- 
rected to the cementing of a permanent union and the 
building of a strong central authority it was work upon 
the lines along which the nation was moving, and to- 
wards an end which the nation really, if subconsciously, 
desired. But closely associated with this object in Ham- 
ilton's mind was another which the nation did not desire 
and which was alien to its instincts and destiny. All 
this second part of his work failed, and involved him 
in its ruin. 

Hamilton had fought bravely in the Revolutionary 
War, but for the ideals which had become more and more 
the inspiration of the Revolution he cared nothing, and 
was too honest to pretend to care. He had on the other 
hand a strong and genuine American patriotism. Per- 
haps his origin helped him to a larger view in this mat- 
ter than was common among his contemporaries. He 
was not born in any of the revolted colonies, but in Ber- 
muda, of good blood but with the bar sinister stamped 



90 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

upon his birth. He had migrated to New York to seek 
his fortune, but his citizenship of that State remained 
an accident. He had no family traditions tying him to 
any section, and, more than any public man that appeared 
before the West began to produce a new type, he felt 
America as a whole. He had great administrative talents 
of which he was fully conscious, and the anarchy which 
followed the conclusion of peace was hateful to his in- 
stinct for order and strong government. But the strong 
government which he would have created was of a dif- 
ferent type from that which America ultimately devel- 
oped. Theoretically he made no secret of his preference 
for a Monarchy over a Republic, but the suspicion that 
he meditated introducing Monarchical institutions into 
America, though sincerely entertained by Jefferson and 
others, was certainly false. Whatever his theoretic 
preferences, he was intensely alive to the logic of facts, 
and must have known that a brand-new American mon- 
archy would have been as impossible as it would have 
been ludicrous. In theory and practice, however, he 
really was anti-democratic. Masses of men seemed to 
him incapable alike of judgment and of action, and he 
thought no enduring authority could be based upon the 
instincts of the "great beast," as he called the mob. He 
looked for such authority in what seemed to him the 
example of history, and especially to the example of 
England. He knew how powerful both at home and 
abroad was the governing machine which the English 
aristocracy had established after the revolution of 1689; 
and he realized more fully than most men of that age, 
or indeed of this, that its strength lay in a small but very 
national governing class wielding the people as an in- 
strument. Such a class he wished to create in America, 
to connect closely, as the English oligarchy had con- 



THE MANTLE OF WASHINGTON 91 

nected itself closely, with the great moneyed interests, 
and to entrust with the large powers which in his judg- 
ment the central government of the Federation needed. 
Jefferson came back from France in the winter of 
1789, and was at once offered by Washington the Sec- 
retaryship of State. The offer was not a very welcome 
one, for he was hot with the enthusiasm of the great 
French struggle, and would gladly have returned to Paris 
and watch its progress. He felt, however, that the Presi- 
dent's insistence laid upon him the duty of giving the 
Government the support of his abilities and popularity. 
He had accepted the Constitution which he had had no 
share in framing, not perhaps as exactly what he would 
have desired, but certainly in full good faith and without 
reserve. It probably satisfied him at least as well as it 
satisfied Hamilton, who had actually at one time with- 
drawn from the Convention in protest against its refusal 
to accept his views. Jefferson's criticisms, such as they 
were, related mostly to matters of detail : some of them 
were just and some were subsequently incorporated in 
amendments. But there is ample evidence that for none 
of them was he prepared to go the length of opposing or 
even delaying the settlement. It is also worth noting 
that none of them related to the balance of power be- 
tween the Federal and States Government, upon which 
Jefferson is often loosely accused of holding extreme 
particularist views. As a fact he never held such views. 
His formula that "the States are independent as to every- 
thing within themselves and united as to everything 
respecting foreign nations" is really a very good sum- 
mary of the principles upon which the Constitution is 
based, and states substantially the policy which all the 
truest friends of the Union have upheld. But he was 
committed out and out to the principle of popular gov- 



92 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

ernment, and when it became obvious that the Feder- 
alists under Hamilton's leadership were trying to make 
the central government oligarchical, and that they were 
very near success, Jefferson quite legitimately invoked 
and sought to confirm the large powers secured by the 
Constitution itself to the States for the purpose of ob- 
structing their programme. 

It was some time, however, before the antagonism 
between the two secretaries became acute, and meanwhile 
the financial genius of Hamilton was reducing the eco- 
nomic chaos bequeathed by the war to order and solv- 
ency. All of his measures showed fertility of invention 
and a thorough grasp of his subject; some of them were 
unquestionably beneficial to the country. But a careful 
examination will show how closely and deliberately he 
was imitating the English model which we know to have 
been present to his mind. He established a true National 
Debt similar to that which Montague had created for the 
benefit of William of Orange. In this debt he proposed 
to merge the debts of the individual States contracted 
during the War of Independence. Jefferson saw no ob- 
jection to this at the time, and indeed it was largely 
through his favour that a settlement was made which 
overcame the opposition of certain States. 

This settlement had another interest as being one of 
the perennial geographical compromises by means of 
which the Union was for so long preserved. The sup- 
port of Hamilton's policy came mainly from the North ; 
the opposition to it from the South. It so happened that 
coincidentally North and South were divided on another 
question, the position of the projected capital of the 
Federation. The Southerners wanted it to be on the 
Potomac between Virginia and Maryland ; the Northern- 
ers would have preferred it further north. At Jefferson's 



THE MANTLE OF WASHINGTON 93 

house Hamilton met some of the leading Southern politi- 
cians, and a bargain was struck. The Secretary's pro- 
posal as to the State debts was accepted, and the South 
had its way in regard to the capital. Hamilton probably 
felt that he had bought a solid advantage in return for 
a purely sentimental concession. Neither he nor any 
one else could foresee the day of peril when the posi- 
tion of Washington between the two Southern States 
would become one of the gravest of the strategic em- 
barrassments of the Federal Government. 

Later, when Hamilton's policy and personality had 
become odious to him, Jefferson expressed remorse for 
his conduct on the occasion, and blamed his colleague for 
taking advantage of his ignorance of the question. His 
sincerity cannot be doubted, but it will appear to the im- 
partial observer that his earlier judgment was the wiser 
of the two. The assumption of State debts had really 
nothing "monocratic" or anti-popular about it — nothing 
even tending to infringe the rights and liberties of the 
several States — while it was clearly a statesmanlike mea- 
sure from the national standpoint, tending at once to re- 
store the public credit and cement the Union. But Jef- 
ferson read backwards into this innocuous and beneficent 
stroke of policy the spirit which he justly perceived to 
inform the later and more dubious measures which pro- 
ceeded from the same author. 

Of these the most important was the creation of the 
first United States Bank. Here Hamilton was quite cer- 
tainly inspired by the example of the English Whigs. He 
knew how much the stability of the settlement made in 
1689 had owed to the skill and foresight with which 
Montague, through the creation of the Bank of England, 
had attached to it the great moneyed interests of the City. 
He wished, through the United States Bank, to attach 



94 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

the powerful moneyed interests of the Eastern and 
Middle States in the same fashion to the Federal Gov- 
ernment. This is how he and his supporters would have 
expressed it. Jefferson said that he wished to fill Con- 
gress with a crowd of mercenaries bound by pecuniary 
ties to the Treasury and obliged to lend it, through good 
and evil repute, a perennial and corrupt support. The 
two versions are really only different ways of stating the 
same thing. To a democrat such a standing alliance be- 
tween the Government and the rich will always seem a 
corrupt thing — nay, the worst and least remediable form 
of corruption. To a man of Hamilton's temper it seemed 
merely the necessary foundation of a stable political 
equilibrium. Thus the question of the Bank really 
brought the two parties which were growing up in the 
Cabinet and in the nation to an issue which revealed the 
irreconcileable antagonism of their principles. 

The majority in Congress was with Hamilton; but his 
opponents appealed to the Constitution. They denied 
the competency of Congress under that instrument to 
establish a National Bank. When the Bill was in due 
course sent to Washington for signature he asked the 
opinions of his Cabinet on the constitutional question, 
and both Hamilton and Jefferson wrote very able state 
papers in defence of their respective views. After some 
hesitation Washington decided to sign the Bill and to 
leave the question of constitutional law to the Supreme 
Court. In due course it was challenged there, but Mar- 
shall, the Chief Justice, was a decided Federalist, and 
gave judgment in favour of the legality of the Bank. 

The Federalists had won the first round. Meanwhile 
the party which looked to Jefferson as leader was or- 
ganizing itself. It took the name of "Republican," as 
signifying its opposition to the alleged monarchical de- 



THE MANTLE OF WASHINGTON 95 

signs of Hamilton and his supporters. Later, when it 
appeared that such a title was really too universal to be 
descriptive, the Jeffersonians began to call themselves by 
the more genuinely characteristic title of "Democratic 
Republicans," subsequently abbreviated into "Demo- 
crats." That name the party which, alone among Ameri- 
can parties, can boast an unbroken historic continuity 
of more than a century, retains to this day. 

At the end of his original term of four years Wash- 
ington was prevailed upon to give way to the universal 
feeling of the nation and to accept a second term. No 
party thought of opposing him, but a significant division 
appeared over the Vice-Presidency. The Democrats ran 
Clinton against John Adams of Massachusetts, and 
though they failed there appeared in the voting a sig- 
nificant alliance, which was to determine the politics of 
a generation. New York State, breaking away from her 
Northern neighbours, voted with the Democratic South 
for Clinton. And the same year saw the foundation in 
New York City of that dubious but very potent product 
of democracy, which has perhaps become the best abused 
institution in the civilized world, yet has somehow or 
other contrived to keep in that highly democratic society 
a power which it could never retain for a day without a 
genuine popular backing — Tammany Hall. 

Meanwhile the destinies of every nation of European 
origin, and of none perhaps more, in spite of their geo- 
graphical remoteness, than of the United States, were 
being profoundly influenced by the astonishing events 
that were shaping themselves in Western Europe. At 
first all America was enthusiastic for the French Revo- 
lution. Americans were naturally grateful for the aid 
given them by the French in their own struggle for 
freedom, and saw with eager delight the approaching 



96 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

liberation of their liberators. But as the drama unrolled 
itself a sharp, though very unequal, division of opinion 
appeared. In New England, especially, there were many 
who were shocked at the proceedings of the French, at 
their violence, at their Latin cruelty in anger, and, above 
all perhaps, at that touch of levity which comes upon the 
Latin when he is face to face with death. Massacres 
and carmagnoles did not strike the typical Massachu- 
setts merchant as the methods by which God-fearing 
men should protest against oppression. The strict mili- 
tary government which succeeded to, controlled and di- 
rected in a national fashion the violent mood of the peo- 
ple — that necessary martial law which we call "the Ter- 
ror" — seemed even less acceptable to hfs fundamentally 
Whiggish political creed. Yet — and it is a most signifi- 
cant fact — the bulk of popular American opinion was not 
shocked by these things. It remained steadily with the 
French through all those events which alienated opinion 
— even Liberal opinion — in Europe. It was perhaps be- 
cause European opinion, especially English opinion, even 
when Liberal, was at bottom aristocratic, while the Amer- 
ican people were already a democracy. But the fact is 
certain. By the admission of those American writers 
who deplore it and fail to comprehend it, the great mass 
of the democracy of America continued, through ^ood 
and evil repute, to extend a vivid and indulgent sym- 
pathy to the democracy of France. 

The division of sympathies which had thus become 
apparent, was converted into a matter of practical politics 
by the entry of England into the war which a Coalition 
was waging against the French Republic. That inter- 
vention at once sharpened the sympathies of both sides 
and gave them a practical purpose. England and France 
were now arrayed against each other, and Americans, 



THE MANTLE OF WASHINGTON 97 

though their Government remained neutral, arrayed 
themselves openly as partisans of either combatant. The 
division followed almost exactly the lines of the earlier 
quarrel which had begun to appear as the true meaning 
of Hamilton's policy discovered itself. The Hamilto- 
nians were for England. The Jeffersonians were for 
France. 

A war of pamphlets and newspapers followed, into the 
details of which it is not necessary to go. The Feder- 
alists, with the tide going steadily against them, had the 
good luck to secure the aid of a pen which had no match 
in Europe. The greatest master of English controver- 
sial prose that ever lived was at that time in America. 
Normally, perhaps, his sympathies would have been with 
the Democrats. But love of England was ever the deep- 
est and most compelling passion of the man who habitu- 
ally abused her institutions so roundly. The Democrats 
were against his fatherland, and so the supporters of 
Hamilton found themselves defended in a series of pub- 
lications over the signature of "Peter Porcupine" with 
all the energy and genius which belonged only to William 
Cobbett. 

A piquancy of the contest was increased by the fact 
that it was led on either side by members of the Admin- 
istration. Washington had early put forth a Declaration 
of Neutrality, drawn up by Randolph, who, though lean- 
ing if anything to Jefferson's side, took up a more or 
less intermediate position between the parties. Both sides 
professed to accept the principle of neutrality, but their 
interpretations of it were widely different. Jefferson did 
not propose to intervene in favour of France, but he did 
not think Americans were bound to disguise their mor- 
al sympathies. They would appear, he thought, both un- 
grateful and false to the first principles of their own com- 



98 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

monwealth if, whatever limitation prudence might impose 
in their action, they did not desire that France should 
be victorious over the Coalition of Kings. The great 
majority of the American people took the same view. 
When Genet, the envoy of the newly constituted Repub- 
lic, arrived from France, he received an ovation which 
Washington himself at the height of his glory could 
hardly have obtained. Nine American citizens out of 
ten hastened to mount the tricolour cockade, to learn 
the "Marseillaise," and to take their glasses to the vic- 
tory of the sister Republic. So strong was the wave 
of popular enthusiasm that the United States might per- 
haps have been drawn into active co-operation with 
France had France been better served by her minister. 

Genet was a Girondin, and the Girondins, perhaps 
through that defect in realism which ruined them at 
home, were not good diplomatists. It is likely enough 
that the warmth of his reception deranged his judgment ; 
at any rate he misread its significance. He failed to take 
due account of that sensitiveness of national feeling in 
a democracy which, as a Frenchman of that time, he 
should have been specially able to appreciate. He began 
to treat the resources of the United States as if they had 
already been placed at the disposal of France, and when 
very properly rebuked he was foolish enough to attempt 
to appeal to the nation against its rulers. The attitude 
of the Secretary of State ought to have warned him of 
the imprudence of his conduct. No man in America was 
a better friend to France than Jefferson; but he stood 
up manfully to Genet in defence of the independent rights 
of his country, and the obstinacy of the ambassador pro- 
duced, as Jefferson foresaw that it must produce, a cer- 
tain reaction of public feeling by which the Anglophil 
party benefited. 



THE MANTLE OF WASHINGTON 99 

At the close of the year 1793, Jefferson, weary of end- 
less contests with Hamilton, whom he accused, not with- 
out some justification, of constantly encroaching on his 
colleague's proper department, not wholly satisfied with 
the policy of the Government and perhaps feeling that 
Genet's indiscretions had made his difficult task for the 
moment impossible, resigned his office. He would have 
done so long before had not Washington, sincerely anx- 
ious throughout these troubled years to hold the balance 
even between the parties, repeatedly exerted all his influ- 
ence to dissuade him. The following year saw the 
"Whiskey Insurrection" in Pennsylvania — a popular pro- 
test against Hamilton's excise measures. Jefferson more 
than half sympathized with the rebels. Long before, on 
the occasion of Shays's insurrection, he had expressed 
with some exaggeration a view which has much more 
truth in it than those modern writers who exclaim in 
horror at his folly could be expected to understand — the 
view that the readiness of people to rebel against their 
rulers is no bad test of the presence of democracy among 
them. He had even added that he hoped the country 
would never pass ten years without a rebellion of some 
sort. In the present case he had the additional motives 
for sympathy that he himself disapproved of the law 
against which Pennsylvania was in revolt, and detested 
its author. Washington could not be expected to take the 
same view. He was not anti -democratic like Hamilton ; 
he sincerely held the theory of the State set forth in the 
Declaration of Independence. But he was something of 
an aristocrat, and very much of a soldier. As an aris- 
tocrat he was perhaps touched with the illusion which 
was so fatal to his friend Lafayette, the illusion that 
privilege can be abolished and yet the once privileged 
class partially retain its ascendancy by a sort of tacit 



100 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

acknowledgment by others of its value. As a soldier he 
disliked disorder and believed in discipline. As a com- 
mander in the war he had not spared the rod, and had 
even complained of Congress for mitigating the severity 
of military punishments. It may be that the "Whiskey 
Insurrection," which he suppressed with prompt and 
drastic energy, led him for the first time to lean a little 
to the Hamiltonian side. At any rate he was induced, 
though reluctantly and only under strong pressure, to 
introduce into a Message to Congress a passage reflect- 
ing on the Democratic Societies which were springing 
up everywhere and gaining daily in power ; and in return 
found himself attacked, sometimes with scurrility, in the 
more violent organ of the Democracy. 

Washington's personal ascendancy was, however, 
sufficient to prevent the storm from breaking while he 
was President. It was reserved for his successor. In 
1797 his second term expired. He had refused a third, 
thereby setting an important precedent which every sub- 
sequent President has followed, and bade farewell to 
politics in an address which is among the great historical 
documents of the Republic. The two points especially 
emphasized were long the acknowledged keynotes of 
American policy: the avoidance at home of "sectional" 
parties — that is, of parties following geographical lines 
— and abroad the maintenance of a strict independence 
of European entanglements and alliances. 

Had a Presidential election then been what it became 
later, a direct appeal to the popular vote, it is probable 
that Jefferson would have been the second President of 
the United States. But the Electoral College was still 
a reality, and its majority leant to Federalism. Immeas- 
urably the ablest man among the Federalists was Hamil- 
ton, but for many reasons he was not an "available" 



THE MANTLE OF WASHINGTON 101 

choice. He was not a born American. He had made 
many and formidable personal enemies even within the 
party. Perhaps the shadow on his birth was a draw- 
back; perhaps also the notorious freedom of his private 
life — for the strength of the party lay in Puritan New 
England. At any rate the candidate whom the Feder- 
alists backed and succeeded in electing was John Adams 
of Massachusetts. By the curiously unworkable rule, 
soon repealed, of the original Constitution, which gave 
the Vice-Presidency to the candidate who had the second 
largest number of votes, Jefferson found himself elected 
to that office under a President representing everything 
to which he was opposed. 

John Adams was an honest man and sincerely loved 
his country. There his merits ended. He was readily 
quarrelsome, utterly without judgment and susceptible 
to that mood of panic in which mediocre persons are 
readily induced to act the "strong man." During his ad- 
ministration a new quarrel arose with France — a quarrel 
in which once again those responsible for that country's 
diplomacy played the game of her enemies. Genet had 
merely been an impracticable and impatient enthusiast. 
Talleyrand, who under the Directory took charge of for- 
eign affairs, was a scamp; and, clever as he was, was 
unduly contemptuous of America, where he had lived 
for a time in exile. He attempted to use the occasion of 
the appearance of an American mission in Paris to wring 
money out of America, not only for the French Treasury, 
but for his own private profit and that of his colleagues 
and accomplices. A remarkable correspondence which 
fully revealed the blackmailing attempt made by the 
agents of the French Government on the representatives 
of the United States known as the "X.Y.Z." letters, was 
published and roused the anger of the whole country. 



102 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

"Millions for defence but not one cent for Tribute" was 
the universal catchword. Hamilton would probably have 
seized the opportunity to go to war with France with 
some likelihood of a national backing. Adams avoided 
war and thereby split his party, but he did not avoid 
steps far more certain than a war to excite the hostility 
of democratic America. His policy was modelled upon 
the worst of the panic-bred measures by means of which 
Pitt and his colleagues were seeking to suppress "Jacob- 
inism" in England. Such a policy was odious anywhere ; 
in a democracy it was also insane. Further the Aliens 
Law and the Sedition Law which he induced Congress 
to pass were in flagrant and obvious violation of the 
letter and spirit of the Constitution. They were barely 
through Congress when the storm broke on their authors. 
Jefferson, in retirement at Monticello, saw that his hour 
was come. He put himself at the head of the opposition 
and found a whole nation behind him. 

Kentucky, carved out of the western territory and 
newly grown to Statehood, took the lead of resistance. 
For her legislature Jefferson drafted the famous "Ken- 
tucky Resolutions," which condemned the new laws as 
unconstitutional (which they were) and refused to allow 
them to be administered within her borders. On the 
strength of these resolutions Jefferson has been described 
as the real author of the doctrine of "Nullification" : and 
technically this may be true. Nevertheless there is all 
the difference in the world between the spirit of the Ken- 
tucky Resolutions and that of "Nullification" as South 
Carolina afterwards proclaimed its legitimacy. About 
the former there was nothing sectional. It was not pre- 
tended that Kentucky had any peculiar and local objection 
to the Sedition Law, or was standing against the other 
States in resisting it. She was vindicating a freedom 



THE MANTLE OF WASHINGTON 103 

common to all the States, valued by all and menaced 
in all. She claimed that she was making herself the 
spokesman of the other States in the same fashion as 
Hampden made himself the spokesman of the other 
great landed proprietors in resisting taxation by the 
Crown. 

The event amply justified her claim. The oppressive 
laws which the Federalists had induced Congress to pass 
were virtually dead letters from the moment of their 
passing. And when the time came for the nation to 
speak, it rose as one man, and flung Adams from his seat. 
The Federalist party virtually died of the blow. The 
dream of an oligarchical Republic was at an end, and 
the will of the people, expressed with unmistakable em- 
phasis, gave the Chief Magistracy to the author of the 
Declaration of Independence. 



CHAPTER V 

THE VIRGINIAN DYNASTY 

I have spoken of Jefferson's election as if it had been a 
direct act of the people; and morally it was so. But in 
the actual proceedings there was a certain hitch, which is 
of interest not only because it illustrated a peculiar tech- 
nical defect in the original Constitution and so led to 
its amendment, but because it introduces here, for the 
first time, the dubious but not un fascinating figure of 
Aaron Burr. 

Burr was a politician of a type which democracies will 
always produce, and which those who dislike democracy 
will always use as its reproach. Yet the reproach is 
evidently unjust. In all societies, most of those who 
meddle with the government of men will do so in pursuit 
of their own interests, and in all societies the professional 
politician will reveal himself as a somewhat debased 
type. In a despotism he will become a courtier and ob- 
tain favour by obsequious and often dishonourable serv- 
ices to a prince. In an old-fashioned oligarchy he will 
adopt the same attitude towards some powerful noble. 
In a parliamentary plutocracy, like our own, he will pro- 
ceed in fashion with which we are only too familiar, will 
make himself the paid servant of those wealthy men who 
finance politicians, and will enrich himself by means of 
"tips" from financiers and bribes from Government con- 
tractors. In a democracy, the same sort of man will try 
to obtain his ends by flattering and cajoling the popu- 

104 



THE VIRGINIAN DYNASTY 105 

lace. It is not obvious that he is more mischievous as 
demagogue than he was as courtier, lackey, or parlia- 
mentary intriguer. Indeed, he is almost certainly less 
so, for he must at least in some fashion serve, even if 
only that he may deceive them, those whose servant he 
should be. At any rate, the purely self-seeking dema- 
gogue is certainly a recurrent figure in democratic poli- 
tics, and of the self-seeking demagogue Aaron Burr was 
an excellent specimen. 

He had been a soldier not without distinction, and to 
the last he retained a single virtue — the grand virtue of 
courage. For the rest, he was the Tammany Boss writ 
large. An able political organizer, possessed of much 
personal charm, he had made himself master of the 
powerful organization of the Democratic party in New 
York State, and as such was able to bring valuable sup- 
port to the party whicrji was opposing the administration 
of Adams. As a reward for his services, it was deter- 
mined that he should be Democratic candidate for the 
Vice-Presidency. But here the machinery devised by the 
Conventions played a strange trick. When the votes of 
the Electoral College came to be counted, it was found 
that instead of Jefferson leading and yet leaving enough 
votes to give Burr the second place, the votes for the two 
were exactly equal. This, under the Constitution, threw 
the decision into the hands of the House of Representa- 
tives, and in that House the Federalists still held the bal- 
ance of power. They could not choose their own nomi- 
nee, but they could choose either Jefferson or Burr, and 
many of them, desiring at the worst to frustrate the tri- 
umph of their great enemy, were disposed to choose 
Burr; while Burr, who cared only for his own career, 
was ready enough to lend himself to such an intrigue. 

That the intrigue failed was due mainly to the pa- 



106 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

triotism of Hamilton. All that was best and worst in 
him concurred in despising the mere flatterer of the mob. 
Jefferson was at least a gentleman. And, unfairly as 
he estimated him both morally and intellectually, he 
knew very well that the election of Jefferson would not be 
a disgrace to the Republic, while the election of Burr 
would. His patriotism overcame his prejudices. He 
threw the whole weight of his influence with the Fed- 
eralists against the intrigue, and he defeated it. It is 
the more to his honour that he did this to the advantage 
of a man whom he could not appreciate and who was 
his enemy. It was the noblest and purest act of his 
public career. It probably cost him his life. 

Jefferson was elected President and Burr Vice-Presi- 
dent, as had undoubtedly been intended by the great ma- 
jority of those who had voted the Democratic ticket at 
the elections. But the anomaly and disaster of Burr's 
election had been so narrowly avoided that a change in 
the Constitution became imperative. It was determined 
that henceforward the votes for President and Vice-Pres- 
ident should be given separately. The incident had an- 
other consequence. Burr, disappointed in hopes which 
had almost achieved fulfilment, became from that mo- 
ment a bitter enemy of Jefferson and his administra- 
tion. Also, attributing the failure of his promising plot 
to Hamilton's intervention, he hated Hamilton with a 
new and insatiable hatred. Perhaps in that hour he al- 
ready determined that his enemy should die. 

Jefferson's inauguration was full of that deliberate and 
almost ceremonial contempt of ceremony in which that 
age found a true expression of its mood, though later 
and perhaps more corrupt times have inevitably found 
such symbolism merely comic. It was observed as strik- 
ing the note of the new epoch that the President rejected 



THE VIRGINIAN DYNASTY 107 

all that semi-regal pomp which Washington and Adams 
had thought necessary to the dignity of their office. It 
is said that he not only rode alone into Washington (he 
was the first resident to be inaugurated in the newly built 
capital), dressed like any country gentleman, but, when 
he dismounted to take the oath, tethered his horse with 
his own hands. More really significant was the presence 
of the populace that elected him — the great heaving, 
unwashed crowd elbowing the dainty politician in the 
very presence chamber. The President's inaugural ad- 
dress was full of a generous spirit of reconciliation. 
"We are all Republicans," he said, "we are all Federal- 
ists." Every difference of opinion was not a difference 
of principle, nor need such differences interfere with 
"our attachment to our Union and to representative gov- 
ernment." 

Such liberality was the more conspicuous by contrast 
with the petty rancour of his defeated rival, who not only 
refused to perform the customary courtesy of welcom- 
ing his successor at the White House, but spent his last 
hours there appointing Federalists feverishly to public 
offices solely in order to compel Jefferson to choose be- 
tween the humiliation of retaining such servants and 
the odium of dismissing them. The new President very 
rightly refused to recognize nominations so made, and 
this has been seized upon by his detractors to hold him 
up as the real author of what was afterwards called "the 
Spoils System." It would be far more just to place that 
responsibility upon Adams. 

The most important event of Jefferson's first admin- 
istration was the Louisiana Purchase. The colony of 
Louisiana at the mouth of the Mississippi, with its vast 
hinterland stretching into the heart of the American con- 
tinent, had, as we have seen, passed in 1762 from French 



108 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

into Spanish hands. Its acquisition by the United States 
had been an old project of Jefferson's. When Secretary 
of State under Washington, he had mooted it when set- 
tling with the Spanish Government the question of the 
navigation of the Misssissippi. As President he revived 
it; but before negotiations could proceed far, the whole 
situation was changed by the retrocession of Louisiana 
to France as part of the terms dictated by Napoleon to 
a Spain which had fallen completely under his control. 
The United States could not, in any case, have regarded 
the transfer without uneasiness, and to all schemes of 
purchase it seemed a death-blow, for it was believed that 
the French Emperor had set his heart upon the resurrec- 
tion of French Colonial power in America. But Jeffer- 
son was an excellent diplomatist, at once conciliatory 
and unyielding : he played his cards shrewdly, and events 
helped him. The Peace of Amiens was broken, and, 
after a very brief respite, England and France were 
again at war. Napoleon's sagacity saw clearly enough 
that he could not hope to hold and develop his new col- 
ony in the face of a hostile power which was his mas- 
ter on the sea. It would suit his immediate purpose 
better to replenish his treasury with good American dol- 
lars which might soon be urgently needed. He became, 
therefore, as willing to sell as Jefferson was to buy, and 
between two men of such excellent sense a satisfactory 
bargain was soon struck. The colony of Louisiana and 
all the undeveloped country which lay behind it became 
the inheritance of the American Federation. 

Concerning the transaction, there is more than one 
point to be noted of importance to history. One is the 
light which it throws on Jefferson's personal qualities. 
Because this man held very firmly an abstract and rea- 
soned theory of the State, could define and defend it 



THE VIRGINIAN DYNASTY 109 

with extraordinary lucidity and logic, and avowedly 
guided his public conduct by its light, there has been too 
much tendency to regard him as a mere theorist, a sort 
of Girondin, noble in speculation and rhetoric, but un- 
equal to practical affairs and insufficiently alive to con- 
crete realities. He is often contrasted unfavourably with 
Hamilton in this respect : and yet he had, as events 
proved, by far the acuter sense of the trend of American 
popular opinion and the practical requirements of a gov- 
ernment that should command its respect; and he made 
fewer mistakes in mere political tactics than did his rival. 
But his diplomacy is the best answer to the charge. Let 
any one who entertains it follow closely the despatches 
relating to the Louisiana purchase, and observe how 
shrewdly this supposed visionary can drive a good bar- 
gain for his country, even when matched against Tal- 
leyrand with Bonaparte behind him. One is reminded 
that before he entered politics he enjoyed among his fel- 
low-planters a reputation for exceptional business acu- 
men. 

Much more plausible is the accusation that Jefferson 
in the matter of Louisiana forgot his principles, and 
acted in a manner grossly inconsistent with his attitude 
when the Federalists were in power. Certainly, the pur- 
chase can only be defended constitutionally by giving a 
much larger construction to the powers of the Federal 
authority than even Hamilton had ever promulgated. If 
the silence of the Constitution on the subject must, as 
Jefferson had maintained, be taken as forbidding Con- 
gress and the Executive to charter a bank, how much 
more must a similar scheme forbid them to expend mil- 
lions in acquiring vast new territories beyond the bor- 
ders of the Confederacy. In point of fact, Jefferson 
himself believed the step he and Congress were taking 



110 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

to be beyond their present powers, and would have pre- 
ferred to have asked for a Constitutional Amendment to 
authorize it. But he readily gave way on this to those 
who represented that such a course would give the mal- 
content minority their chance, and perhaps jeopardize 
the whole scheme. The fact is, that "State Rights" were 
not to Jefferson a first principle, but a weapon which he 
used for the single purpose of resisting oligarchy. His 
first principle, in which he never wavered for a moment, 
was that laid down in the "Declaration" — the sovereignty 
of the General Will. To him Federalism was nothing 
and State Sovereignty was nothing but the keeping of 
the commandments of the people. Judged by this test, 
both his opposition to Hamilton's bank and his pur- 
chase of the Louisiana territory were justified; for on 
both occasions the nation was with him. 

Jefferson's inconsistency, therefore, if inconsistency 
it were, brought him little discredit. It was far other- 
wise with the inconsistency of the Federalists. For they 
also changed sides, and of their case it may be said that, 
like Milton's Satan, they "rode with darkness." The 
most respectable part of their original political creed 
was their nationalism, their desire for unity, and their 
support of a strong central authority. Had this been 
really the dominant sentiment of their connection, they 
could not but have supported Jefferson's policy, even 
though they might not too unfairly have reproached him 
with stealing their thunder. For not only was Jeffer- 
son's act a notable example of their own theory of "broad 
construction" of the Constitution, but it was perhaps a 
more fruitful piece of national statesmanship than the 
best of Hamilton's measures, and it had a direct tendency 
to promote and perpetuate that unity which the Fed- 
eralists professed to value so highly, for it gave to the 



THE VIRGINIAN DYNASTY 111 

States a new estate of vast extent and incalculable po- 
tentialities, which they must perforce rule and develop 
in common. But the Federalists forgot everything, even 
common prudence, in their hatred of the man who had 
raised the people against them. To injure him, most 
of them had been ready to conspire with a tainted adven- 
turer like Burr. They were now ready for the same 
object to tear up the Union and all their principles with 
it. One of their ablest spokesmen, Josiah Quincy, made 
a speech against the purchase, in which he anticipated 
the most extreme pronouncements of the Nullifiers of 
1832 and the Secessionists of i860, declared that his 
country was not America but Massachusetts, that to her 
alone his ultimate allegiance was due, and that if her 
interests were violated by the addition of new Southern 
territory in defiance of the Constitution, she would re- 
pudiate the Union and take her stand upon her rights as 
an independent Sovereign State. 

By such an attitude the Federalists destroyed only 
themselves. Some of the wiser among them left the 
party on this issue, notably John Quincy Adams, son of 
the second President of the United States, and himself 
to be raised later, under somewhat disastrous circum- 
stances, to the same position. The rump that remained 
true, not to their principles but rather to their vendetta, 
could make no headway against a virtually unanimous 
nation. They merely completed and endorsed the gen- 
eral judgment on their party by an act of suicide. 

But the chief historical importance of the Louisiana 

purchase lies in the fact that it gave a new and for long 

years an unlimited scope to that irresistible movement of 

expansion westward which is the key to all that age in 

I American history. In the new lands a new kind of 

I American was growing up. Within a generation he was 



112 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

to come by his own; and a Westerner in the chair of 
Washington was to revolutionize the Commonwealth. 

Of the governing conditions of the West, two stand 
out as of especial importance to history. 

One was the presence of unsubdued and hostile Indian 
tribes. Ever since that extraordinary man, Daniel Boone 
(whose strange career would make an epic for which 
there is no room in this book), crossed the Alleghanies 
a decade before the beginning of the Revolution and made 
an opening for the white race into the rich valleys of 
Kentucky, the history of the western frontier of Euro- 
pean culture had been a cycle of Indian wars. The na- 
tive race had not yet been either tamed or corrupted by 
civilization. Powerful chiefs still ruled great territories 
as independent potentates, and made peace and war with 
the white men on equal terms. From such a condition 
it followed that courage and skill in arms were in the 
West not merely virtues and accomplishments to be ad- 
mired, but necessities which a man must acquire or 
perish. The Westerner was born a fighter, trained as a 
fighter, and the fighting instinct was ever dominant in 
him. So also was the instinct of loyalty to his fellow- 
citizens, a desperate, necessary loyalty as to comrades 
in a besieged city — as, indeed, they often were. 

The other condition was the product partly of natural 
circumstances and partly of that wise stroke of states- 
manship which had pledged the new lands in trust to 
the whole Confederacy. The Westerner was American 
— perhaps he was the first absolutely instinctive Ameri- 
can. The older States looked with much pride to a long 
historical record which stretched back far beyond the 
Union into colonial times. The Massachusetts man would 
still boast of the Pilgrim Fathers. The Virginian still 
spoke lovingly of the "Old Plantation." But Kentucky 



THE VIRGINIAN DYNASTY 113 

and Tennessee, Ohio and Indiana were children of the 
Union. They had grown to statehood within it, and they 
had no memories outside it. They were peopled from 
all the old States, and the pioneers who peopled them 
were hammered into an intense and instinctive homo- 
geneity by the constant need of fighting together against 
savage nature and savage man. Thus, while in the older 
settlements one man was conscious above all things that 
he was a New Englander, and another that he was a 
Carolinian, the Western pioneer was primarily conscious 
that he was a white man and not a Red Indian, nay, often 
that he was a man and not a grizzly bear. Hence grew 
up in the West that sense of national unity which was 
to be the inspiration of so many celebrated Westerners 
of widely different types and opinions, of Clay, of Jack- 
son, of Stephen Douglas, and of Abraham Lincoln. 

But this was not to take place until the loyalty of the 
West had first been tried by a strange and sinister temp- 
tation. 

Aaron Burr had been elected Vice-President coinci- 
dently with Jefferson's election as President ; but his am- 
bition was far from satisfied. He was determined to 
make another bid for the higher place, and as a prelimi- 
nary he put himself forward as candidate for the Gov- 
ernorship of New York State. It was as favourable 
ground as he could find to try the issue between himself 
and the President, for New York had been the centre 
of his activities while he was still an official Democrat, 
and her favour had given him his original position in 
the past. But he could not hope to succeed without the 
backing of those Federalist malcontents who had nearly 
made him President in 1800. To conciliate them he bent 
all his energies and talents, and was again on the point 
of success when Hamilton, who also belonged to New 



114 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

York State, again crossed his path. Hamilton urged 
all the Federalists whom he could influence to have noth- 
ing to do with Burr, and, probably as a result of his 
active intervention, Burr was defeated. 

Burr resolved that Hamilton must be prevented from 
thwarting him in the future, and he deliberately chose 
a simple method of removing him. He had the advan- 
tage of being a crack shot. He forced a private quarrel 
on Hamilton, challenged him to a duel', and killed him. 

He can hardly have calculated the effect of his action : 
it shocked the whole nation, which had not loved Ham- 
ilton, but knew him for a better man than Burr. Duel- 
ling, indeed, was then customary among gentlemen in the 
United States, as it is to-day throughout the greater 
part of the civilized world; but it was very rightly felt 
that the machinery which was provided for the vindica- 
tion of outraged honour under extreme provocation was 
never meant to enable one man, under certain forms, to 
kill another merely because he found his continued ex- 
istence personally inconvenient. That was what Burr 
had done; and morally it was undoubtedly murder. 
Throughout the whole East Burr became a man marked 
with the brand of Cain. He soon perceived it, but his 
audacity would not accept defeat. He turned to the 
West, and initiated a daring conspiracy which, as he 
hoped, would make him, if not President of the United 
States, at least President of something. 

What Burr's plan, as his own mind conceived it, really 
was it is extremely difficult to say; for he gave not only 
different, but directly opposite accounts to the various 
parties whom he endeavoured to engage in it. To the 
British Ambassador, whom he approached, he represent- 
ed it as a plan for the dismemberment of the Republic 
from which England had everything to gain. Louisiana 



THE VIRGINIAN DYNASTY 115 

was to secede carrying the whole West with her, and the 
new Confederacy was to become the ally of the Mother 
Country. For the Spanish Ambassador he had another 
story. Spain was to recover predominant influence in 
Louisiana by detaching it from the American Republic, 
and recognizing it as an independent State. To the 
French-Americans of Louisiana he promised complete 
independence of both America and Spain. To the West- 
erners, whom he tried to seduce, exactly the opposite 
colour was given to the scheme. It was represented as 
a design to provoke a war with Spain by the invasion 
and conquest of Mexico; and only if the Federal Gov- 
ernment refused to support the filibusters, was the West 
to secede. Even this hint of hypothetical secession was 
only whispered to those whom it might attract. To oth- 
ers all thought of disunion was disclaimed ; and yet an- 
other complexion was put on the plot. The West was 
merely to make legitimate preparations for the invasion 
of Mexico and Florida in the event of certain disputes 
then pending with Spain resulting in war. It was ap- 
parently in this form that the design was half disclosed 
to the most influential citizen and commander of the 
militia in the newly created State of Tennessee, Andrew 
Jackson, the same that we saw as a mere schoolboy riding 
and fighting at Hanging Rock. 

Jackson had met Burr during the brief period when 
he was in Congress as representative of his State. He 
had been entertained by him and liked him, and when 
Burr visited Tennessee he was received by Jackson with 
all the hospitality of the West. Jackson was just the 
man to be interested in a plan for invading Mexico in 
the event of a Spanish war, and he would probably not 
have been much shocked — for the West was headstrong, 
used to free fighting, and not nice on points of inter- 



116 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

national law — at the idea of helping on a war for the 
purpose. But he loved the Union as he loved his own 
life. Burr said nothing to him of his separatist schemes. 
When later he heard rumours of them, he wrote peremp- 
torily to Burr for an explanation. Burr, who, to do him 
justice, was not the man to shuffle or prevaricate, lied 
so vigorously and explicitly that Jackson for the mo- 
ment believed him. Later clearer proof came of his 
treason, and close on it followed the President's procla- 
mation apprehending him, for Burr had been betrayed by 
an accomplice to Jefferson. Jackson at once ordered out 
the militia to seize him, but he had already passed west- 
ward out of his control. The Secretary of War, who, 
as it happened, was a personal enemy of Jackson's, think- 
ing his connection with Burr might be used against him, 
wrote calling in sinister tone for an account of his con- 
duct. Jackson's reply is so characteristic of the man 
that it deserves to be quoted. After saying that there 
was nothing treasonable in Burr's communications to him 
personally, he adds : "But, sir, when proofs showed him 
to be a Treator" (spelling was never the future Presi- 
dent's strong point), "I could cut his throat with as much 
pleasure as I would cut yours on equal testimony." 

The whole conspiracy fizzled out. Burr could get no 
help from any of the divergent parties he had attempted 
to gain. No one would fight for him. His little band 
of rebels was scattered, and he himself was seized, tried 
for treason, and acquitted on a technical point. But his 
dark, tempestuous career was over. Though he lived to 
an unlovely old age, he appears no more in history. 

Jefferson was re-elected President in 1804. He was 
himself doubtful about the desirability of a second ten- 
ure, but the appearance at the moment of a series of 
particularly foul attacks upon his private character made 



THE VIRGINIAN DYNASTY 117 

him feel that to retire would amount to something like 
a plea of guilty. Perhaps it would have served his per- 
manent fame better if he had not accepted another term, 
for, owing to circumstances for which he was only partly 
to blame, his second Presidency appears in history as 
much less successful than his first. 

Its chief problem was the maintenance of peace and 
neutrality during the colossal struggle between France 
under Napoleon and the kings and aristocracies of Eu- 
rope who had endeavoured to crush the French Revolu- 
tion, and who now found themselves in imminent peril of 
being themselves crushed by its armed and amazing child. 

Jefferson sincerely loved peace. Moreover, the sym- 
pathy for France, of which he had at one time made no 
disguise, was somewhat damped by the latest change 
which had taken place in the French Government. Large 
as was his vision compared with most of his contempo- 
raries, he was too much soaked in the Republican tra- 
dition of antiquity, which was so living a thing in that 
age, to see in the decision of a nation of soldiers to 
have a soldier for their ruler and representative, the 
fulfilment of democracy and not its denial. But his de- 
sire for peace was not made easier of fulfilment by 
either of the belligerent governments. Neither thought 
the power of the United States to help or hinder of 
serious account, and both committed constant acts of 
aggression against American rights. Nor was his po- 
sition any stronger in that he had made it a charge 
against the Federalists that they had provided in an 
unnecessarily lavish fashion for the national defence. 
In accordance with his pledges he had reduced the army. 
His own conception of the best defensive system for 
America was the building of a large number of small 
but well-appointed frigates to guard her coasts and 



118 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

her commerce. It is fair to him to say that when war 
came these frigates of his gave a good account of them- 
selves. Yet his own position was a highly embarrassing 
one, anxious from every motive to avoid war and yet 
placed between an enemy, or rather two enemies, who 
would yield nothing to his expostulations, and the rising 
clamour, especially in the West, for the vindication of 
American rights by an appeal to arms. 

Jefferson attempted to meet the difficulty by a weapon 
which proved altogether inadequate for the purpose in- 
tended, while it was bound to react almost as seriously 
as a war could have done on the prosperity of America. 
He proposed to interdict all commerce with either of the 
belligerents, so long as both persisted in disregarding 
American rights, while promising to raise the interdict 
in favour of the one which first showed a disposition to 
treat the United States fairly. Such a policy steadily 
pursued by such an America as we see to-day would 
probably have succeeded. But at that time neither com- 
batant was dependent upon American products for the 
essentials of vitality. The suppression of the American 
trade might cause widespread inconvenience, and even 
bring individual merchants to ruin, but it could not hit 
the warring nations hard enough to compel governments 
struggling on either side for their very lives in a contest 
which seemed to hang on a hair to surrender anything 
that might look like a military advantage. On the 
other hand, the Embargo, as it was called, hit the Amer- 
icans themselves very hard indeed. So great was the 
outcry of the commercial classes, that the President was 
compelled to retrace his steps and remove the interdict. 
The problem he handed over unsolved to his successor. 

That successor was James Madison, another Virgin- 
ian, Jefferson's lieutenant ever since the great struggle 



THE VIRGINIAN DYNASTY 119 

with the Federalists, and his intimate friend from a still 
earlier period. His talents as a writer were great; he 
did not lack practical sagacity, and his opinions were 
Jefferson's almost without a single point of divergence. 
But he lacked Jefferson's personal prestige, and conse- 
quently the policy followed during his presidency was 
less markedly his own than that of his great predecessor 
had been. 

Another turn of the war- wheel in Europe had left 
America with only one antagonist in place of two. Tra- 
falgar had destroyed, once and for all, the power of 
France on the sea, and she was now powerless to injure 
American interests, did she wish to do so. England, on 
the other hand, was stronger for that purpose than ever, 
and was less restrained than ever in the exercise of her 
strength. A new dispute, especially provocative to the 
feelings of Americans, had arisen over the question of 
the impressment of seamen. The press-gang was active 
in England at the time, and pursued its victims on the 
high seas. It even claimed the right to search the ships 
of neutrals for fugitives. Many American vessels were 
violated in this fashion, and it was claimed that some 
of the men thus carried off to forced service, though 
originally English, had become American citizens. Eng- 
land was clearly in the wrong, but she refused all re- 
dress. One minister, sent by us to Washington, Erskine, 
did indeed almost bring matters to a satisfactory settle- 
ment, but his momentary success only made the ultimate 
anger of America more bitter, for he was disowned and 
recalled, and, as if in deliberate insult, was replaced by 
a certain Jackson who, as England's Ambassador to 
Denmark in 1804, had borne a prominent part in the most 
sensational violation of the rights of a neutral country 
that the Napoleonic struggle had produced. 



120 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

There seemed no chance of peace from any concilia- 
tory action on the part of Great Britain. The sole chance 
hung on the new President's inheritance of Jefferson's 
strong leaning in that direction. But Madison was by no 
means for peace at any price ; and indeed Jefferson him- 
self, from his retreat at Monticello, hailed the war when 
it ultimately came, as unmistakably just. For a long 
time, however, the President alone held the nation back 
from war. The War Party included the Vice-President 
Monroe, who had been largely instrumental in bringing 
about the Louisiana purchase. But its greatest strength 
was in the newly populated West, and its chief spokes- 
man in Congress was Henry Clay of Kentucky. 

This man fills so large a space in American politics 
for a full generation, that some attempt must be made 
to give a picture of him. Yet a just account of his char- 
acter is not easy to give. It would be simple enough to 
offer a superficial description, favourable or hostile, but 
not one that would account for all his actions. Perhaps 
the best analysis would begin by showing him as half 
the aboriginal Westerner and half the Washington poli- 
tician. In many ways he was very Western. He had 
a Westerner's pugnacity, and at the same time a West- 
erner's geniality and capacity for comradeship with men. 
He had to the last a Westerner's private tastes — espe- 
cially a taste for gambling — and a Westerner's readiness 
to fight duels. Above all, from the time that he entered 
Congress as the fiercest of the "war hawks" who clam- 
oured for vengeance on England, to the time when, an 
old and broken man, he expended the last of his enor- 
mous physical energy in an attempt to bridge the wid- 
ening gulf between North and South, he showed through 
many grievous faults and errors that intense national 
feeling and that passion for the Union which were grow- 



THE VIRGINIAN DYNASTY 121 

ing so vigorously in the fertile soil beyond the Alle- 
ghanies. But he was a Western shoot early engrafted 
on the political society of Washington — the most po- 
litical of all cities, for it is a political capital and nothing 
else. He entered Congress young and found there ex- 
actly the atmosphere that suited his tastes and tempera- 
ment. He was as much the perfect parliamentarian as 
Gladstone. For how much his tact and instinct for the 
tone of the political assembly in which he moved counted, 
may be guessed from this fact : that while there is no 
speech of his that has come down to us that one could 
place for a moment beside some of extant contempo- 
rary speeches of Webster and Calhoun, yet it is un- 
questionable that he was considered fully a match for 
either Webster or Calhoun in debate, and in fact attained 
an ascendancy over Congress which neither of those 
great orators ever possessed. At the management of 
the minds of men with whom he was actually in con- 
tact, he was unrivalled. No man was so skilful in har- 
monizing apparently irreconcilable differences and choos- 
ing the exact line of policy which opposing factions could 
agree to support. Three times he rode what seemed the 
most devastating political storms, and three times he 
imposed a peace. But with the strength of a great 
parliamentarian he had much of the weakness that goes 
with it. He thought too much as a professional; and 
in his own skilled work of matching measures, arrang- 
ing parties and moving politicians about like pawns, he 
came more and more to forget the silent drive of the 
popular will. All this, however, belongs to a later stage 
of Clay's development. At the moment, we have to deal 
with him as the ablest of those who were bent upon com- 
pelling the President to war. 

Between Clay and the British Government Madison's 



122 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

hand was forced, and war was declared. In America 
there were widespread rejoicings and high hopes of the 
conquest of Canada and the final expulsion of England 
from the New World. Yet the war, though on the whole 
justly entered upon, and though popular with the greater 
part of the country, was not national in the fullest sense. 
It did not unite, rather it dangerously divided, the Fed- 
eration, and that, unfortunately, on geographical lines. 
New England from the first was against it, partly be- 
cause most of her citizens sympathized with Great Britain 
in her struggle with Napoleon, and partly because her 
mercantile prosperity was certain to be hard hit, and 
might easily be ruined by a war with the greatest of 
naval powers. When, immediately after the declaration 
of war, in 1812, Madison was put forward as Presi- 
dential candidate for a second term, the contest showed 
sharply the line of demarcation. North-east of the Hud- 
son he did not receive a vote. 

The war opened prosperously for the Republic, with 
the destruction by Commodore Perry of the British fleet 
on Lake Ontario — an incident which still is held in glor- 
ious memory by the American Navy and the American 
people. Following on this notable success, an invasion 
of Canada was attempted; but here fortune changed 
sides. The invasion was a complete failure, the Ameri- 
can army was beaten, forced to fall back and attacked, 
in its turn, upon American soil. Instead of American 
troops occupying Quebec, English troops occupied a great 
part of Ohio. 

Meanwhile, Jefferson's frigates were showing their 
metal. In many duels with English cruisers they had 
the advantage, though we in this country naturally hear 
most — indeed, it is almost the only incident of this war 
of which we ever do hear — of one of the cases in which 



THE VIRGINIAN DYNASTY 123 

victory went the other way — the famous fight between 
the Shannon and the Chesapeake. On the whole, the bal- 
ance of such warfare leant in favour of the American 
sea captains. But it was not by such warfare that the 
issue could be settled. England, summoning what 
strength she could spare from her desperate struggle with 
the French Emperor, sent an adequate fleet to convoy 
a formidable army to the American coast. It landed 
without serious opposition at the mouth of the Chesa- 
peake, and marched straight on the national capital, which 
the Government was forced to abandon. 

No Englishman can write without shame of what fol- 
lowed. All the public buildings of Washington were 
deliberately burnt. For this outrage the Home Govern- 
ment was solely responsible. The general in command re- 
ceived direct specific orders, which he obeyed unwill- 
ingly. No pretence of military necessity, or even of 
military advantage, can be pleaded. The act, besides be- 
ing a gross violation of the law of nations, was an ex- 
hibition of sheer brutal spite, such as civilized war sel- 
dom witnessed until Prussia took a hand in it. It had 
its reward. It burnt deep into the soul of America; and 
from that incident far more than from anything that 
happened in the War of Independence dates that inerad- 
icable hatred of England which was for generations al- 
most synonymous with patriotism in most Americans, 
and which almost to the hour of President Wilson's in- 
tervention made many in that country doubt whether, 
even as against Prussia, England could really be the 
champion of justice and humanity. 

Things never looked blacker for the Republic than in 
those hours when the English troops held what was left 
of Washington. Troubles came thicker and thicker 
upon her. The Creek Nation, the most powerful of the 



124 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

independent Indian tribes, instigated partly by English 
agents, partly by the mysterious native prophet Tecum- 
seh, suddenly descended with fire and tomahawk on the 
scattered settlements of the South-west, while at the 
same time a British fleet appeared in the Gulf of Mexico, 
apparently meditating either an attack on New Orleans 
or an invasion through the Spanish territory of West- 
ern Florida, and in that darkest hour when it seemed 
that only the utmost exertions of every American could 
save the United States from disaster, treason threatend 
to detach an important section of the Federation from 
its allegiance. 

The discontent of New England is intelligible enough. 
No part of the Union had suffered so terribly from the 
war, and the suffering was the bitterer for being incurred 
in a contest which was none of her making, which she 
had desired to avoid, and which had been forced on her 
by other sections which had suffered far less. Her com- 
merce, by which she largely lived, had been swept from 
the seas. Her people, deeply distressed, demanded an im- 
mediate peace. Taking ground as discontented sections, 
North and South, always did before 1864 on the doc- 
trine of State Sovereignty, one at least, and that the 
greatest of the New England States, began a movement 
which seemed to point straight to the dilemma of sur- 
render to the foreigner or secession and dismemberment 
from within. 

Massachusetts invited representatives of her sister 
States to a Convention at Hartford. The Convention 
was to be consultative, but its direct and avowed aim was 
to force the conclusion of peace on any terms. Some 
of its promoters were certainly prepared, if they did not 
get their way, to secede and make a separate peace for 
their own State. The response of New England was not 



THE VIRGINIAN DYNASTY 125 

as unanimous as the conspirators had hoped. Vermont 
and New Hampshire refused to send delegates. Rhode 
Island consented, but qualified her consent with the phrase 
"consistently with her obligations" — implying that she 
would be no party to a separate peace or to the break- 
up of the Union. Connecticut alone came in without 
reservation. Perhaps this partial failure led the plot- 
ters to lend a more moderate colour to their policy. At 
any rate, secession was not directly advocated at Hart- 
ford. It was hinted that if such evils as those of which 
the people of New England complained proved perma- 
nent, it might be necessary; but the members of the 
Convention had the grace to admit that it ought not to 
be attempted in the middle of a foreign war. Their 
good faith, however, is dubious, for they put forward 
a proposal so patently absurd that it could hardly have 
been made except for the purpose of paving the way for 
a separate peace. They declared that each State ought 
to be responsible for its own defences, and they asked 
that their share of the Federal taxes should be paid 
over to them for the purpose. With that and a resolu- 
tion to meet again at Boston and consider further steps 
if their demands were not met, they adjourned. They 
never reassembled. 

In the South the skies were clearing a little. Jackson 
of Tennessee, vigorous and rapid in movement, a master 
of Indian warfare, leading an army of soldiers who wor- 
shipped him as the Old Guard worshipped Napoleon, 
by a series of quick and deadly strokes overthrew the 
Creeks, followed them to their fastnesses, and broke 
them decisively at Tohopeka in the famous "hickory 
patch" which was the holy place of their nation. 

He was rewarded in the way that he would have most 
desired by a commission against the English, who had 



126 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

landed at Pensacola in Spanish territory, perhaps with 
the object of joining hands with their Indian allies. They 
found those allies crushed by Jackson's energy, but they 
still held their foothold on the Florida coast, from which 
they could menace Georgia on the one side and New 
Orleans on the other. Spain was the ally of England 
in Europe, but in the American War she professed neu- 
trality. As, however, she made no effort to prevent Eng- 
land using a Spanish port as a base of operations, she 
could not justly complain when Jackson seized the neigh- 
bouring port of Mobile, from which he marched against 
the British and dislodged them. But the hardest and 
most glorious part of his task was to come. The next 
blow was aimed at New Orleans itself. Jackson has- 
tened to its defence. The British landed in great force 
at the mouth of the Mississippi and attacked the city 
from both sides. Jackson's little army was greatly out- 
numbered, but the skill with which he planned the de- 
fence and the spirit which he infused into his soldiers 
(the British themselves said that Jackson's men seemed 
of a different stuff from all other American troops they 
had encountered) prevailed against heavy odds. Three 
times Jackson's lines were attacked: in one place they 
were nearly carried, but his energy just repaired the 
disaster. At length the British retired with heavy losses 
and took to their ships. New Orleans was saved. 

Before this last and most brilliant of American vic- 
tories had been fought and won, peace had been signed 
at Ghent. News travelled slowly across the Atlantic, and 
neither British nor American commanders knew of it 
for months later. But early in the year negotiations had 
been opened, and before Christmas they reached a con- 
clusion. Great Britain was more weary of the war than 
her antagonist. If she had gone on she might have won 



THE VIRGINIAN DYNASTY 127 

a complete victory, or might have seen fortune turn 
decisively against her. She had no wish to try the al- 
ternative. Napoleon had abdicated at Fontainebleau, 
and been despatched to Elba, and there were many who 
urged that the victorious army of the Peninsula under 
Wellington himself should be sent across the Atlantic to 
dictate terms. But England was not in the mood for 
more fighting. After twenty years of incessant war she 
saw at last the hope of peace. She saw also that the 
capture of Washington had not, as had been hoped, put 
an end to American resistance, but had rather put new 
life into it. To go on meant to attempt again the gi- 
gantic task which she had let drop as much from weari- 
ness as from defeat a generation before. She preferred 
to cry quits. The Peace, which was signed on behalf 
of the Republic by Clay — once the most vehement of 
"war-hawks" — was in appearance a victory for neither 
side. Frontiers remained exactly as they were when the 
first shot was fired. No indemnity was demanded or 
paid by either combatant. The right of impressment, 
the original cause of war, was neither affirmed nor 
disclaimed, though since that date England has never 
attempted to use it. Yet there is no such thing in his- 
tory as "a drawn war." One side or the other must 
always have attempted the imposition of its will and 
failed. In this case it was England. America will al- 
ways regard the war of 1812 as having ended in victory; 
and her view is substantially right. The new Republic, 
in spite of, or, one might more truly say, because of 
the dark reverses she had suffered and survived, was 
strengthened and not weakened by her efforts. The na- 
tional spirit was raised and not lowered. The mood of 
a nation after a war is a practically unfailing test of 
victory or defeat; and the mood of America after 1814 



128 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

was happy, confident, creative — the mood of a boy who 
has proved his manhood. 

In 1816 Madison was succeeded by Monroe. Monroe, 
though, like his successor, a Virginian and a disciple of 
Jefferson, was more of a nationalist, and had many 
points of contact with the new Democracy which had 
sprung up first in the West, and was daily becoming 
more and more the dominant sentiment of the Republic. 
"Federalism" had perished because it was tainted with 
oligarchy, but there had been other elements in it which 
were destined to live, and the "National Republicans," as 
they came to call themselves, revived them. They were 
for a vigorous foreign policy and for adequate prepara- 
tions for war. They felt the Union as a whole, and 
were full of a sense of its immense undeveloped pos- 
sibilities. They planned expensive schemes of improve- 
ment by means of roads, canals, and the like to be car- 
ried out at the cost of the Federal Government, and they 
cared little for the protests of the doctrinaires of "State 
Right." To them America owes, for good or evil, her 
Protective system. The war had for some years inter- 
rupted commerce with the Old World, and native indus- 
tries had, perforce, grown up to supply the wants of the 
population. These industries were now in danger of de- 
struction through the reopening of foreign trade, and 
consequently of foreign competition. It was determined 
to frame the tariff, hitherto imposed mainly, if not en- 
tirely, with a view to revenue, in such a way as to shelter 
them from such peril. The exporting Cotton States, 
which had nothing to gain from Protection, were natur- 
ally hostile to it; but they were overborne by the gen- 
eral trend of opinion, especially in the West. One last 
development of the new "national" policy — the most 
questionable of its developments and opposed by Clay 



THE VIRGINIAN DYNASTY 129 

at the time, though he afterwards made himself its cham- 
pion — was the revival, to meet the financial difficulties 
created by the war, of Hamilton's National Bank, whose 
charter, under the Jeffersonian regime, had been suffered 
to expire. 

But the Western expansion, though it did much to con- 
solidate the Republic, contained in it a seed of dissen- 
sion. We have seen how, in the Convention, the need 
of keeping an even balance between Northern and South- 
ern sections was apparent. That need was continually 
forced into prominence as new States were added. The 
presence or absence of negro slavery had become the dis- 
tinguishing badge of the sections; and it became the apple 
of discord as regards the development of the West. Jef- 
ferson had wished that slavery should be excluded from 
all the territory vested in the Federal authority, but he 
had been overruled, and the prohibition had been applied 
only to the North-Western Territory out of which the 
States of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois were carved. The 
South- West had been left open to slavery, and it had 
become the custom, with the purpose of preserving the 
balance in the Senate, to admit slave States and free in 
pairs. This worked satisfactorily enough so long as the 
States claiming admission were within a well-defined geo- 
graphical area. But when Missouri became sufficiently 
populated to be recognized as a State, there was a keen 
contest. Her territory lay across the line which had 
hitherto divided the section.;. She must be either a North- 
ern promontory projecting into the South or a Southern 
promontory projecting into the North. Neither section 
would yield, and matters were approaching a domestic 
crisis when Clay intervened. He was in an excellent 
position to arbitrate, for he came from the most northern 
of Southern States, and had ties with both sections. 



130 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

Moreover, as has been said, his talents were peculiarly 
suited to such management as the situation required. He 
proposed a settlement which satisfied moderate men on 
both sides, was ratified by a large majority in Congress, 
and accepted on all hands as final. Missouri was to enter 
the Union, as she apparently desired to do, as a Slave 
State, but to the west of her territory the line 36 longi- 
tude, very little above her southern border, was to be 
the dividing line of the sections. This gave the South an 
immediate advantage, but at a heavy ultimate price, for 
it left her little room for expansion. But one more 
Slave State could be carved out of the undeveloped West- 
ern Territory — that of Arkansas. Beyond that lay the 
lands reserved by treaty to the Indian tribes, which ex- 
tended to the frontier of the Western dominions of Mex- 
ico. Clay, who, though by no means disposed to be a 
martyr on the question, sincerely desired to bring about 
the gradual extinction of slavery, may well have delib- 
erately planned this part of his compromise to accom- 
plish that end. At the same time, Maine — a territory 
hitherto attached to Connecticut — was admitted as a 
Free State to balance Missouri. 

Such was the great Missouri Compromise which kept 
the peace between the sections for a generation, and 
which gradually acquired an almost religious sanction 
in the minds of Americans devoted to the Union. It 
struck the note of the new era, which is called in Amer- 
ican history "the era of good feeling." Sectional differ- 
ences had been settled, political factions were in dissolu- 
tion. Monroe's second election was, for the first time 
since Washington's retirement, without opposition. There 
were no longer any organized parlies, such as Hamilton 
and Jefferson and even Clay had led. There were, of 
course, still rivalries and differences, but they were per- 



THE VIRGINIAN DYNASTY 131 

sonal or concerned with particular questions. Over the 
land there was a new atmosphere of peace. 

Abroad, America had never been stronger. To this 
period belongs the acquisition of Florida from Spain, 
an acquisition carried through by purchase, but by a 
bargain rather leonine in character. It cannot, however, 
be said that the United States had no reasonable griev- 
ance in the matter. Spain had not been able — or said 
that she had not been able — to prevent the British from 
taking forcible possession of one of her principal ports 
during a war in which she was supposed to be neutral. 
She declared herself equally unable to prevent the Creek 
and Seminole Indians from taking refuge in her terri- 
tory and thence raiding the American lands over the bor- 
der. Monroe had a good case when he pressed on her 
the point that she must either maintain order in her 
dominions or allow others to do so. Jackson, who was 
in command against the Seminoles, insisted — not unrea- 
sonably — that he could not deal with them unless he was 
allowed to follow them across the Spanish frontier and 
destroy their base of operations. Permission was given 
him, and he used it to the full, even to the extent of 
occupying important towns in defiance of the edicts of 
their Spanish governors. Monroe's Cabinet was divided 
in regard to the defensibility of Jackson's acts, but these 
acts probably helped to persuade Spain to sell while she 
could still get a price. The bargain was struck : Florida 
became American territory, and Jackson was appointed 
her first governor. 

But the best proof that the prestige of America stood 
higher since the war of 1812 was the fact that the Power 
which had then been her rather contemptuous antagonist 
came forward to sue for her alliance. The French Revo- 
lution, which had so stirred English-speaking America, 



132 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

had produced an even greater effect on the Latin colo- 
nies that lay further south. Almost all the Spanish do- 
minions revolted against the Spanish Crown, and after 
a short struggle successfully established their independ- 
ence. Naturally, the rebels had the undivided sympathy 
of the United States, which was the first Power to recog- 
nize their independence. Now, however, the Holy Alli- 
ance was supreme in Europe, and had reinstated the 
Bourbons on the Spanish as on the French throne. It 
was rumoured that the rulers of the alliance meditated 
the further step of resubjugating Spain's American em- 
pire. Alexander I. of Russia was credited with being 
especially eager for the project, and with having offered 
to dispatch a Russian army from Siberia for the pur- 
pose : it was further believed that he proposed to reward 
himself by extending his own Alaskan dominions as far 
south as California. England, under Canning's leader- 
ship, had separated herself from the Holy Alliance, and 
had almost as much reason as the United States to dread 
and dislike such a scheme as the Czar was supposed to 
mediate. Canning sent for the American Ambassador, 
and suggested a joint declaration against any adventures 
by European powers on the American Continent. The 
joint declaration was declined, as seeming to commit 
the United States too much to one of those "entangling 
alliances" against which Washington had warned his 
fellow-countrymen; but the hint was taken. 

Monroe put forth a proclamation in which he declared 
that America was no longer a field for European coloni- 
zation, and that any attempt on the part of a European 
power to control the destiny of an American community 
would be taken as a sign of "an unfriendly disposition 
towards the United States." 

Canning let it be understood that England backed the 



THE VIRGINIAN DYNASTY 133 

declaration, and that any attempt to extend the opera- 
tions of the Holy Alliance to America would have to 
be carried out in the teeth of the combined opposition 
of the two great maritime powers so recently at war with 
each other. The plan was abandoned, and the independ- 
ence of the South American Republics was successfully 
established. 

But much more was established. The "Monroe Doc- 
trine" became, and remains to-day, the corner-stone of 
American foreign policy. It has been greatly extended 
in scope, but no American Government has ever, for a 
moment, wavered in its support. None could afford to do 
so. To many Englishmen the doctrine itself, and still 
more the interpretation placed upon it by the United 
States in later times, seems arrogant — just as to many 
Americans the British postulate of unchallengeable su- 
premacy at sea seems arrogant. But both claims, arro- 
gant or no, are absolutely indispensable to the nation 
that puts them forward. If the American Republic were 
once to allow the principle that European Powers had 
the right, on any pretext whatever, to extend their bor- 
ders on the American Continent, then that Republic 
would either have to perish or to become in all things 
a European Power, armed to the teeth, or ever careful 
of the balance of power, perpetually seeking alliance and 
watching rivals. The best way to bring home to an 
honest but somewhat puzzled American — and there are 
many such — why we cannot for a moment tolerate what 
is called by some "the freedom of the seas," is to ask 
him whether he will give us in return the "freedom" of 
the American Continent. The answer in both cases is 
that sane nations do not normally, and with their eyes 
open, commit suicide. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE JACKSONIAN REVOLUTION 

During the "age of good feeling" in which the Virgin- 
ian dynasty closed, forces had been growing in the 
shadow which in a few short years were to transform 
the Republic. The addition to these forces of a per- 
sonality completed the transformation which, though it 
made little or no change in the laws, we may justly call 
a revolution. 

The government of Jefferson and his successors was 
a government based on popular principles and adminis- 
tered by democratically minded gentlemen. The dreams 
of an aristocratic republic, which had been the half- 
avowed objective of Hamilton, were dissipated for ever 
by the Democratic triumph of 1800. The party which 
had become identified with such ideas was dead; no 
politician any longer dased to call himself a Federalist. 
The dogmas of the Declaration of Independence were 
everywhere recognized as the foundation of the States, 
recognized and translated into practice in that govern- 
ment was by consent and in the main faithfully reflected 
the general will. But the administration, in the higher 
branches at least, was exclusively in the hands of gen- 
tlemen.. 

When a word is popularly used in more than one sense, 
the best course is perhaps to define clearly the sense in 
which one uses it, and then to use it unvaryingly in that 
sense. The word "gentleman," then, will here always be 

134 



THE JACKSONIAN REVOLUTION 135 

used in its strictly impartial class significance without 
thought of association with the idea of "Good man" or 
"Quietly conducted person," and without any more inten- 
tion of compliment than if said "peasant" or "mechanic." 
A gentleman is one who has that kind of culture and 
habit of life which usually go with some measure of in- 
heritance in wealth and status. That, at any rate, is what 
is meant when it is here said that Jefferson and his im- 
mediate successors were gentlemen, while the growing 
impulses to which they appealed and on which they re- 
lied came from men who were not gentlemen. 

This peculiar position endured because the intense sin- 
cerity and single-mindedness of Jefferson's democracy 
impressed the populace and made them accept him as 
their natural leader, while his status as a well-bred Vir- 
ginian squire, like Washington, veiled the revolution that 
was really taking place. The mantle of his prestige was 
large enough to cover not only his friend Madison, but 
Madison's successor Monroe. But at that point the di- 
rect inheritance failed. Among Monroe's possible suc- 
cessors there was no one plainly marked out as the heir 
of the Jeffersonian tradition. Thus — though no Ameri- 
ican public man saw it at the time — America had come 
to a most important parting of the ways. The Virginian 
dynasty had failed; the chief power in the Federation 
must now either be scrambled for by the politicians or 
assumed by the people. 

Among the politicians who must be considered in the 
running for the presidency, the ablest was Henry Clay 
of Kentucky. He was the greatest parliamentary leader 
that America has known. He was unrivalled in the art 
of reconciling conflicting views and managing conflict- 
ing wills. We have already seen him as the triumphant 
author of the Missouri Compromise. He was a West- 



136 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

erner, and was supposed to possess great influence in 
the new States. Politically he stood for Protection, and 
for an interpretation of the Constitution which leaned 
to Federation and away from State Sovereignty. Sec- 
ond only to Clay — if, indeed, second to him — in abilities 
was John Caldwell Calhoun of South Carolina. Cal- 
houn was not yet the Calhoun of the 'forties, the lucid 
fanatic of a fixed political dogma. At this time he was 
a brilliant orator, an able and ambitious politician whose 
political system was unsettled, but tended at the time 
rather in a nationalist than in a particularist direction. 
The other two candidates were of less intellectual dis- 
tinction, but each had something in his favour. William 
Crawford of Georgia was the favourite candidate of 
the State Rights men; he was supposed to be able to 
command the support of the combination of Virginia 
and New York, which had elected every President since 
1800, and there lingered about him a sort of shadow 
of the Jeffersonian inheritance. John Quincy Adams 
of Massachusetts was the son of Washington's suc- 
cessor, but a professed convert to Democratic Republi- 
canism — a man of moderate abilities, but of good per- 
sonal character and a reputation for honesty. He was 
Monroe's Secretary of State, and had naturally a cer- 
tain hereditary hold on New England. 

Into the various intrigues and counter-intrigues of 
these politicians it is not necessary to enter here, for 
from the point of view of American history the epoch- 
making event was the sudden entry of a fifth man who 
was not a politician. To the confusion of all their ar- 
rangements the great Western State of Tennessee nom- 
inated as her candidate for the Presidency General An- 
drew Jackson, the deliverer of New Orleans. 

Jackson was a frontiersrrian and a soldier. Because 



THE JACKSONIAN REVOLUTION 137 

he was a frontiersman he tended to be at once democratic 
in temper and despotic in action. In the rough and 
tumble of life in the back blocks a man must often act 
without careful inquiry into constitutional privileges, but 
he must always treat men as men and equals. It has 
already been noted that men left to themselves always 
tend to be roughly democratic, and that even before the 
Revolution the English colonies had much of the sub- 
stance of Democracy; they had naturally more of it 
after the Revolution. But even after the Revolution 
something like an aristocracy was to be noted in the older 
States, North and South, consisting in the North of the 
old New England families with their mercantile wealth 
and their Puritan traditions, in the South of the great 
slave-owning squires. In the new lands, in the constant 
and necessary fight with savage nature and savage man, 
such distinctions were obliterated. Before a massacre 
all men are equal. In the presence of a grizzly bear 
"these truths" are quite unmistakably self-evident. The 
West was in a quite new and peculiar sense democratic, 
and was to give to America the great men who should 
complete the work of democracy. 

The other side of Jackson's character as it influenced 
his public life, was the outlook which belonged to him as 
a soldier. He had the special soldier's virtue of loy- 
alty. He was, throughout his long life, almost fanat- 
ically loyal in word and deed to his wife, to his friends, 
to his country. But above all he was loyal f o the Jef- 
fersonian dogma of popular sovereignty, which he accept- 
ed quite simply and unquestioningly as soldiers are often 
found to accept a religion. And, accepting it, he acted 
upon it with the same simplicity. Sophistications of it 
moved him to contempt and anger. Sovereignty was in 
the people. Therefore those ought to rule whom the 



138 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

people chose; and these were the servants of the people 
and ought to act as the people willed. All of which is 
quite unassailable; but any one who has ever mixed in 
the smallest degree in politics will understand how ap- 
palling must have been the effect of the sudden intru- 
sion in the atmosphere of such truisms by a man who 
really acted as if they were true. With this simplicity 
of outlook Jackson possessed in an almost unparalleled 
degree the quality which makes a true leader — the capac- 
ity to sum up and interpret the inarticulate will of the 
mass. His eye for the direction of popular feeling was 
unerring, perhaps largely because he shared or rather in- 
carnated the instincts, the traditions, what others would 
call the prejudices of those who followed him. As a 
military leader his soldiers adored him, and he carried 
into civil politics a good general's capacity for identifying 
himself with the army he led. 

He had also, of course, the advantage of a picturesque 
personality and of a high repute acquired in arms. The 
populace called him "Old Hickory" — a nickname orig- 
inally invented by the soldiers who followed him in the 
frontier wars of Tennessee. They loved to tell the 
tale of his victories, his duels, his romantic marriage, 
and to recall and perhaps exaggerate his soldier's pro- 
fanity of speech. But this aspect of Jackson's personality 
has been too much stressed. It was stressed by his friends 
to advertise his personality and by his enemies to dis- 
parage it. It is not false, but it may lead us to read 
history falsely. Just as Danton's loud voice, large ges- 
ture and occasional violence tend to produce a portrait 
of him which ignores the lucidity of his mind and the 
practicality of his instincts, making him a mere chaotic 
demagogue, so the "Old Hickory" legend makes Jackson 
too much the peppery old soldier and ignores his sagac- 



THE JACKSONIAN REVOLUTION 139 

ity, which was in essential matters remarkable. His 
strong prejudices and his hasty temper often led him 
wrong in his estimate of individuals, but he was hardly 
ever at fault in his judgment of masses of men — pre- 
senting therein an almost exact contrast to his rival and 
enemy Clay. With all his limitations, Jackson stands out 
for history as one of the two or three genuine creative 
statesmen that America has produced, and you cannot 
become a creative statesman merely by swearing and 
fighting duels. 

Jackson accepted the nomination for the Presidency. 
He held, in strict accordance with his democratic creed, 
that no citizen should either seek or refuse popular elec- 
tion. But there seems no reason to think that at this 
time he cared much whether he were elected or no. He 
was not an ambitious man, he made no special efforts 
to push his cause, and he indignantly refused to be in- 
volved in any of the intrigues and bargains with which 
Washington was buzzing, or to give any private assur- 
ances to individuals as to the use which he would make 
of his power and patronage if chosen. But when the 
votes were counted it was clear that he was the popular 
favourite. He had by far the largest number of votes 
in the Electoral College, and these votes came from all 
parts of the Republic except New England, while so far 
as can be ascertained the popular vote showed a result 
even more decidedly in his favour. But in the College 
no candidate had an absolute majority, and it therefore 
devolved, according to the Constitution, upon the House 
of Representatives, voting by States, to choose the Presi- 
dent from among the three candidates whose names stood 
highest on the list. 

The House passed over Jackson and gave the prize to 
Adams, who stood next to him — though at a consider- 



140 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

able interval. That it had a constitutional right to do so 
cannot be disputed : as little can it be disputed that in 
doing so it deliberately acted against the sentiment of 
the country. There was no Congressman who did not 
know perfectly well that the people wanted Jackson 
rather than Adams. This, however, was not all. The 
main cause of the decision to which the House came was 
the influence of Clay. Clay had been last on the list 
himself, for the West, where his main strength lay, had 
deserted him for Jackson, but his power in Congress was 
great, and he threw it all into Adams' scale. It is diffi- 
cult to believe that a man of such sagacity was really 
influenced by the reasons he gave at the time — that he 
would not consent by contributing to the election of a 
military chieftain to give the strongest guarantee that 
the Republic will march in the fatal road which has 
conducted every Republic to ruin. Jackson was a sol- 
dier, but he had no army, nor any means of making him- 
self a Caesar if he had wished to do so. Yet Clay may 
reasonably have felt, and was even right in feeling, that 
Jackson's election would be a blow to Republican insti- 
tutions as he understood them. He was really a patriot, 
but he was above all things a Parliamentarian, and the 
effect of Jacksonian democracy really was to diminish 
the importance of Parliamentarism. Altogether Clay 
probably honestly thought that Adams was a fitter man 
to be President than Jackson. 

Only he had another motive; and the discovery of 
this motive moved not only Jackson but the whole coun- 
try to indignation. Adams had no sooner taken the 
oath than in accordance with a bargain previously made 
between the backers of the two men, unofficially but nec- 
essarily with their knowledge, he appointed Clay Secre- 
tary of State. 



THE JACKSONIAN REVOLUTION 141 

Jackson showed no great resentment when he was 
passed over for Adams : he respected Adams, though he 
disliked and distrusted Clay. But when in fulfilment of 
rumours which had reached him but which he had re- 
fused to credit, Clay became Secretary, he was some- 
thing other than angry : he was simply shocked, as he 
would have been had he heard of an associate caught 
cheating at cards. He declared that the will of the peo- 
ple had been set aside as the result of a "corrupt bar- 
gain." He was not wrong. It was in its essence a cor- 
rupt bargain, and its effect was certain to set aside 
the will of the people. Where Jackson was mistaken 
was in deducing that Adams and Clay were utterly dis- 
honourable and unprincipled men. He was a soldier 
judging politicians. But the people judged them in the 
| same fashion. 

1 From that moment Jackson drew the sword and 
i threw away the scabbard. He and his followers fought 
i the Adams administration step by step and hour by hour, 
I and every preparation was made for the triumphant re- 
( turn of Jackson at the next election. If there was plenty 
; of scurrility against Adams and Clay in the journals of 
! the Jacksonian party, it must be owned that the scnb- 
' biers who supported the Administration stooped lower 
I when they sought to attack Jackson through his wife, 
i whom he had married under circumstances which gave 
I a handle to slander. The nation was overwhelmingly 
: with Jackson, and the Government of Quincy Adams 
i was almost as much hated and abused as that of old 
, John Adams had been. The tendency of recent Ameri- 
j can writers has been to defend the unpopular President 
j and to represent the campaign against him and his Sec- 
' retary as grossly unjust. The fact is that many of the 
I charges brought against both were quite unfounded, but 



142 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

that the real and just cause of the popular anger against 
the Administration was its tainted origin. 

The new elections came in 1828, and the rejected of 
Congress carried the whole country. The shadowy fig- 
ment of the "Electoral College," already worn somewhat 
thin, was swept away and Jackson was chosen as by a 
plebiscite. That was the first and most important step 
in the Jacksonian Revolution. The founders of the Re- 
public, while acknowledging the sovereignty of the peo- 
ple, had nevertheless framed the Constitution with the 
intention of excluding the people from any direct share 
in the election of the Chief Magistrate. The feeble check 
which they had devised was nullified. The Sovereign 
People, baulked in 1824, claimed its own in 1828, and 
Jackson went to the White House as its direct nominee. 

His first step was to make a pretty thorough clear- 
ance of the Departmental Offices from the highest to the 
lowest. This action, which inaugurated what is called 
in America the "Spoils System" and has been imitated by 
subsequent Presidents down to the present time, is legiti- 
mately regarded as the least defensible part of Jackson's 
policy. There can be little doubt that the ultimate effect 
was bad especially as an example; but in Jackson's case 
there were extenuating circumstances. He was justly 
conscious of a mandate from the people to govern. He 
had against him a coalition of the politicians who had 
till that moment monopolized power, and the public offices 
were naturally full of their creatures. He knew that he 
would have a hard fight in any case with the Senate 
against him and no very certain majority in the House 
of Representatives. If the machinery of the Executive 
failed him he could not win, and, from his point of view, 
the popular mandate would be betrayed. 

For the most drastic measures he could take to 



THE JACKSONIAN REVOLUTION 143 

strengthen himself and to weaken his enemies left those 
enemies still very formidable. Of the leading politicians, 
only Calhoun, who had been chosen as Vice-President, 
was his ally, and that alliance was not to endure for long. 
The beginning of the trouble was, perhaps, the celebrated 
"Eaton" affair, which is of historic importance only as 
being illustrative of Jackson's character. Of all his Cabi- 
net, Eaton, an old Tennessee friend and comrade in 
arms, probably enjoyed the highest place in the Presi- 
dent's personal affections. Eaton had recently married 
the daughter of an Irish boarding-house keeper at whose 
establishment he stayed when in Washington. She had 
previously been the wife of a tipsy merchant captain 
who committed suicide, some said from melancholia pro- 
duced by strong drink, others from jealousy occasioned 
by the levity of his wife's behaviour. There seems no 
real evidence that she was more than flirtatious with her 
husband's guests, but scandal had been somewhat busy 
with her name, and when Eaton married her the ladies 
of Washington showed a strong disposition to boycott 
the bride. The matrons of the South were especially 
proud of the unblemished correctitude of their social 
code, and Calhoun's wife put herself ostentatiously at the 
head of the movement. Jackson took the other side with 
fiery animation. He was ever a staunch friend, and 
Eaton had appealed to his friendship. Moreover his own 
wife, recently dead, had received Mrs. Eaton and shown 
; a strong disposition to be friends with her, and he con- 
! sidered the reflections on his colleague's wife as a slur 
j on her, whose memory he honoured almost as that of 
j a saint, but who, as he could not but remember, had her- 
j self not been spared by slanderers. He not only extended 
' in the most conspicuous manner the protection of his 
! official countenance to his friend's wife, but almost in- 



144 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

sisted upon his Cabinet taking oath, one by one, at the 
point of a sword, that they believed Mrs. Eaton to be 
"as chaste as a virgin." But the ministers, even when 
overborne by their chivalrous chief, could not control 
the social behaviour of their wives, who continued to 
cold-shoulder the Eatons to the President's great indigna- 
tion and disgust. Van Buren, who regarded Calhoun 
as his rival, and who, as a bachelor, was free to pay 
his respects to Mrs. Eaton without prejudice or hin- 
drance, seems to have suggested to Jackson that Cal- 
houn had planned the whole campaign to ruin Eaton. 
Jackson hesitated to believe this, but close on the heels 
of the affair came another cause of quarrel, arising from 
the disclosure of the fact that Calhoun, when Secretary 
of War in Monroe's Cabinet, had been one of those who 
wished to censure Jackson for his proceedings in Florida 
— a circumstance which he had certainly withheld, and, 
according to Jackson, deliberately lied about in his per- 
sonal dealings with the general. Private relations be- 
tween the two men were completely broken off, and they 
were soon to be ranged on opposite sides in the public 
quarrel of the utmost import to the future of the Re- 
public. 

We have seen how the strong Nationalist movement 
which had sprung from the war of 1812 had produced, 
among other effects, a demand for the protection of 
American industries. The movement culminated in the 
Tariff of 1828, which the South called the "Tariff of 
Abominations." This policy, popular in the North and 
West, was naturally unpopular in the Cotton States, 
which lived by their vast export trade and had nothing 
to gain by a tariff. South Carolina, Calhoun's State, 
took the lead in opposition, and her representatives, ad- 
vancing a step beyond the condemnation of the taxes 



THE JACKSONIAN REVOLUTION 145 

themselves, challenged the Constitutional right of Con- 
gress to impose them. The argument was not altogether 
without plausibility. Congress was undoubtedly em- 
powered by the Constitution to raise a revenue, nor was 
there any stipulation as to how this revenue was to be 
raised. But it was urged that no power was given to 
levy taxes for any other purpose than the raising of such 
revenue. The new import duties were, by the admission 
of their advocates, intended to serve a wholly different 
purpose not mentioned in the Constitution — the protec- 
tion of native industries. Therefore, urged the Caro- 
linian Free Traders, they were unconstitutional and 
could not be lawfully imposed. 

This argument, though ingenious, was not likely to 
convince the Supreme Court, the leanings of which were 
at this time decidedly in favour of "Nationalism." The 
Carolinians therefore took their stand upon another prin- 
ciple, for which they found a precedent in the Kentucky 
Resolutions. They declared that a State had, in virtue 
of its sovereignty, the right to judge as an independent 
nation would of the extent of its obligations under the 
Treaty of Union, and, having arrived at its own inter- 
pretation, to act upon it regardless of any Federal au- 
thority. This was the celebrated doctrine of "Nullifica- 
tion," and in pursuance of it South Carolina announced 
her intention of refusing to allow the protective taxes 
in question to be collected at her port. 

Calhoun was not the originator of Nullification. He 
was Vice-President when the movement began, and could 
with propriety take no part in it. But after his quarrel 
with Jackson he resigned his office and threw in his lot 
with his State. The ablest and most lucid statements of 
the case for Nullification are from his pen, and when he 



146 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

took his seat in the Senate he was able to add to his con- 
tribution the weight of his admirable oratory. 

Much depended upon the attitude of the new Presi- 
dent, and the Nullifiers did not despair of enlisting him 
on their side. Though he had declared cautiously in 
favour of a modern tariff (basing his case mainly on 
considerations of national defence), he was believed to 
be opposed to the high Protection advocated by Clay and 
Adams. He was himself a Southerner and interested in 
the cotton industry, and at the late election he had had 
the unanimous backing of the South; its defection would 
be very dangerous for him. Finally, as an ardent 
Democrat he could hardly fail to be impressed by the 
precedent of the Kentucky Resolutions, which had Jef- 
ferson's authority behind them, and, perhaps to enforce 
this point, Jefferson's birthday was chosen as the occa- 
sion when the President was to be committed to Nullifi- 
cation. 

A Democratic banquet was held at Washington in 
honour of the founder of the party. Jackson was pres- 
ent, and so were Calhoun and the leading Nullifiers. 
Speeches had to be made and toasts given, the burden of 
which was a glorification of State Sovereignty and a de- 
fence of Nullification. Then Jackson rose and gave his 
famous toast : "Our Union : it must be preserved." Cal- 
houn tried to counter it by giving : "Our Union, next to 
our liberties most dear." But every one understood the 
significance of the President's toast. It was a declara- 
tion of war. 

The Nullifiers had quite miscalculated Jackson's atti- 
tude. He was a Southerner by birth, but a frontiersman 
by upbringing, and all the formative influence of his 
youth were of the West. It has been noted how strongly 
the feeling of the West made for the new unity, and in 



THE JACKSONIAN REVOLUTION 147 

no Westerner was the national passion stronger than 
in Jackson. In 1814 he had told Monroe that he would 
have had the leaders of the Hartford Convention hanged, 
and he applied the same measure to Southern as to 
Northern sectionalism. To the summoning of the Null- 
ifying Convention in South Carolina, he replied by a 
message to Congress asking for powers to coerce the 
recalcitrant State. He further told his Cabinet that if 
Congress refused him the powers he thought necessary 
he should have no hesitation in assuming them. He 
would call for volunteers to maintain the Union, and 
would soon have a force at his disposal that should in- 
vade South Carolina, disperse the State forces, arrest 
the leading Nullifiers and bring them to trial before the 
Federal Courts. 

If the energy of Jackson was a menace to South Caro- 
lina it was a grave embarrassment to the party regularly 
opposed to him in Congress and elsewhere. That this 
party could make common cause with the Nullifiers 
seemed impossible. The whole policy of high Protec- 
tion against which South Carolina had revolted was 
Clay's. Adams had signed the tariff of Administrations. 
Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, the leading orator of 
the party and the greatest forensic speaker that America 
has produced, had at one time been a Free Trader. But 
he was deeply committed against the Nullifiers, and had 
denounced the separatist doctrines which found favour 
in South Carolina in a speech the fine peroration of 
which American schoolboys still learn by heart. Web- 
ster, indeed, whether from shame or from conviction, 
separated himself to some extent from his associates and 
gave strenuous support to the "Force Bill" which the 
President had demanded. 

But Clay was determined that Jackson should not have 



148 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

the added power and prestige which would result from 
the suppression of Nullification by the strong hand of the 
Executive. His own bias was in favour of a strong and 
unified Federal authority, but he would have made Con- 
gress that authority rather than the President — a policy 
even less favourable to Jackson's than State Rights, but 
more favourable to the Parliamentarianism which Clay 
delighted in and in which his peculiar talents shone. At 
all costs the Kentucky politician resolved to discount the 
intervention of the President, and his mind was 
peculiarly fertile in devising and peculiarly skilful in 
executing such manoeuvres as the situation required. 
The sacrifice of his commercial policy was involved, but 
he loved Protection less than he hated Jackson, and less, 
to do him justice, than he loved the Union. Negotia- 
tions were opened with Calhoun, and a compromise tariff 
proposed, greatly modified in the direction of Free 
Trade and free of the "abominations" of which South 
Carolina specially complained. This compromise the 
Nullifiers, awed perhaps by the vigour of Jackson, and 
doubtful of the issue if matters were pushed too far, 
accepted. 

Jackson did not like the Clay-Calhoun compromise, 
which seemed to him a surrender to treason ; but in such 
a matter he could not control Congress. On one thing 
he insisted: that the Force Bill should take precedence 
over the new Tariff. Qn this he carried his point The 
two Bills were passed by Congress in the order he de- 
manded, and both were signed by him on the same day. 

Upon this the South Carolinian Convention repealed 
its ordinance nullifying the Tariff, and agreed to the col- 
lection of the duties now imposed. It followed this con- 
cession by another ordinance nullifying the Force Bill. 
The practical effect of this was nil, for there was no 



THE JACKSONIAN REVOLUTION 149 

longer anything to enforce. It was none the less im- 
portant. It meant that South Carolina declined to 
abandon the weapon of Nullification. Indeed, it might 
plausibly be urged that that weapon had justified itself 
by success. It had been defended as a protection against 
extreme oppression, and the extreme oppression com- 
plained of had actually ceased in consequence of its use. 
At any rate, the effect was certainly to strengthen rather 
than to weaken extreme particularism in the South. On 
this point Jackson saw further than Clay or any of his 
contemporaries. While all America was rejoicing over 
the peaceful end of what had looked like an ugly civil 
quarrel, the President was writing to a friend and sup- 
porter : "You have Nullifiers amongst you. Frown upon 
them . . . The Tariff was a mere excuse and a South- 
ern Confederacy the real object. The next excuse will 
be the Negro or Slavery Question." 

The controversy with the Nullifiers had exhibited 
Jackson's patriotism and force of character in a strong 
and popular light, but it had lost him what support he 
could still count upon among the politicians. Calhoun 
was now leagued with Clay and Webster, and the "front 
bench" men (as we should call them) were a united 
phalanx of opposition. It is characteristic of his courage 
that in face of such a situation Jackson ventured to 
challenge the richest and most powerful corporation in 
America. 

The first United States Bank set up by Alexander 
Hamilton as part of his scheme for creating a powerful 
govening class in America was, as we have seen, swept 
away by the democratic reaction which Jefferson led to 
victory. The second, springing out of the financial em- 
barrassments which followed the war with Great Britain, 
had been granted a charter of twenty years which had 



150 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

now nearly expired. The renewal of that charter 
seemed, however, to those who directed the operations 
of the bank and to those who were deep in the politics of 
Washington a mere matter of course. 

The bank was immensely powerful and thoroughly un- 
popular. The anomaly would hardly strike a modern 
Englishman as odd, but it was anomalous in what was 
already a thoroughly democratic state. It was powerful 
because it had on its side the professional politicians, the 
financiers, the rich of the great cities generally — in fact, 
what the Press which such people control calls "the in- 
telligence of the nation." But it was hated by the peo- 
ple, and it soon appeared that it was hated as bitterly 
by the President. Writers who* sympathize with the 
plutocratic side in the quarrel had no difficulty in con- 
victing Jackson of a regrettable ignorance of finance. 
Beyond question he had not that intimate acquaintance 
with the technique of usury which long use alone can 
give. But his instincts in such a matter were as keen 
and true as the instincts of the populace that supported 
him. By the mere health of his soul he could smell out 
the evil of a plutocracy. He knew that the bank was 
a typical monopoly, and he knew that monopolies 
ever grind the faces of the poor and fill politics with 
corruption. And the corruption with which the Bank 
was filling America might have been apparent to duller 
eyes. The curious will find ample evidence in the rec- 
ords of the time, especially in the excuses of the bank 
itself, the point at which insolence becomes comic being 
reached when it was gravely pleaded that loans on easy 
terms were made to members of Congress because it was 
in the public interest that such persons should have prac- 
tical instruction in the principles of banking! Mean- 
while everything was done to corner the Press. Jour- 



THE JACKSONIAN REVOLUTION 151 

nals favourable to the bank were financed with loans 
issued on the security of their plant. Papers on the 
other side were, whenever possible, corrupted by the 
same method. As for the minor fry of politics they 
were of course bought by shoals. 

It is seldom that such a policy, pursued with vigour 
and determination by a body sufficiently wealthy to stick 
at nothing, fails to carry a political assembly. With 
Congress the bank was completely successful. A Bill 
to re-charter that institution passed House and Senate 
by large majorities. It was immediately vetoed by the 
President. 

Up to this point, though his private correspondence 
shows that his mind had long been made up, there had 
been much uncertainty as to what Jackson would do. 
Biddle, the cunning, indefatigable and unscrupulous 
chairman of the bank, believed up to the last moment 
that, if Congress could be secured, he would not dare 
to interpose. To do so was an enterprise which cer- 
tainly required courage. It meant fighting at the same 
time an immensely strong corporation representing two- 
thirds of the money power of the nation, and with ten- 
tacles in every state in the Union, and a parliamentary 
majority in both houses led by a coalition of all the 
most distinguished politicians of the day. The Presi- 
dent had not in his Cabinet any man whose name carried 
such public weight as those of Clay, Webster, or Cal- 
houn, all now in alliance in support of the bank; and his 
Cabinet, such as it was, was divided. The cleverest and 
most serviceable of his lieutenants, Van Buren, was un- 
willing to appear prominently in the matter. He feared 
the power of the Bank in New York State, where his 
own influence lay. McLane, his Secretary of the Treas- 
ury, was openly in favour of the bank, and continued for 



152 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

some time to assure Biddle of his power to bring the 
President round to his views. 

But, as a fact, the attitude of Jackson was never really 
in doubt. He knew that the bank was corrupting public 
life; the very passage of the Bill, against the pledges 
given by many Congressmen to their constituents, was 
evidence of this if any were needed. He knew further 
that it was draining the productive parts of the country, 
especially the South and West, for the profit of a lucky 
financial group in the Eastern States. He knew also 
that such financial groups are never national : he knew 
that the bank had foreign backers, and he showed an 
almost startling prescience as to the evils that were to 
follow in the train of cosmopolitan finance, "more for- 
midable and more dangerous than the naval and military 
power of an enemy." But above all he knew that the 
bank was odious to the people, and he was true to his 
political creed, whereby he, as the elect of the people, 
was bound to enforce its judgment without fear or 
favour. 

Jackson's Veto Message contained a vigorous exposi- 
tion of his objections to the bank on public grounds, 
together with a legal argument against its constitution- 
ality. It was admitted that the Supreme Court had de- 
clared the chartering of the bank to be constitutional, but 
this, it was urged, could not absolve the President of the 
duty of following his own conscience in interpreting the 
Constitution he had sworn to maintain. The authority 
of the Supreme Court must not therefore be permitted to 
control the Congress or the Executive, but have only 
such influence as the force of its reasoning may discover. 
It is believed that this part of the message which gave 
scandal to legalists was supplied by Taney, the Attorney- 
General. It is a curious coincidence, if this be so, that 



THE JACKSONIAN REVOLUTION 153 

more than twenty years later we shall find another great 
President, though bred in the anti-Jacksonian Whig tra- 
dition, compelled to take up much the same attitude in 
regard to a Supreme Court decision delivered by Taney 
himself. 

Biddle and his associates believed that the Message 
would be fatal to the President. So did the leaders of 
the political opposition, and none more than Clay. 
Superlatively skilful in managing political assemblies, he 
was sometimes strangely at fault in judging the mind of 
the mass — a task in which Jackson hardly ever failed. 
He had not foreseen the anger which his acceptance of 
a place from Adams would provide ; and he now evidently 
believed that the defence of the bank would be a popular 
cry in the country. He forced the "Whig" Conven- 
tion — for such was the name which the very composite 
party opposed to Jackson had chosen — to put it in the 
forefront of their programme, and he seems to have 
looked forward complacently to a complete victory on 
that issue. 

His complacency could not last long. Seldom has a 
nation spoken so directly through the complex and often 
misleading machinery of elections as the American na- 
tion spoke in 1832 against the bank. North, south, east 
and west the Whigs were routed. Jackson was re- 
elected President by such an overwhelming expression 
of the popular choice as made the triumph of 1828 seem 
a little thing. Against all the politicians and all the 
interests he had dared to appeal to Cnesar, and the people, 
his unseen ally, had in an instant made his enemies his 
footstool. 

It was characteristic of the man that he at once pro- 
ceeded to carry the war into Africa. Biddle, though 
bitterly disappointed, was not yet resigned to despair. 



154 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

It was believed — and events in the main confirm the 
belief — that he contemplated a new expedient, the use of 
what still remained of the financial power of the bank 
to produce deliberate scarcity and distress, in the hope 
that a reaction against the President's policy would re- 
sult. Jackson resolved to strike the bank a crippling 
blow before such juggling could be attempted. The Act 
of Congress which had established the bank gave him 
power to remove the public deposits at will; and that 
power he determined to exercise. 

A more timid man would have had difficulty with his 
Cabinet. Jackson overcame the difficulty by accepting 
full personal responsibility for what he was about to 
do. He did not dismiss the ministers whose opinion 
differed from his, he brought no pressure to bear on 
their consciences; but neither did he yield his view an 
inch to theirs. He acted as he had resolved to act, and 
made a minute in the presence of his Cabinet that he 
did so on his own initiative. It was essential that the 
Secretary of the Treasury, through whom he must act, 
should be with him. McLane had already been trans- 
ferred to the State Department, and Jackson now nomi- 
nated Taney, a strong-minded lawyer who was his one 
unwavering supporter in the struggle. Taney removed 
the public deposits from the United States Bank. They 
were placed for safe keeping in the banks of the various 
States. The President duly reported to Congress his 
reasons for taking this action. 

In the new House of Representatives, elected at the 
same time as the President, the Democrats were now 
predominant; but the Senate changes its complexion 
more slowly, and there the "Whigs" had still a majority. 
This majority could do nothing but exhibit impotent 
anger, and that they most unwisely did. They refused 



THE JACKSONIAN REVOLUTION 155 

to confirm Taney's nomination as Secretary of the 
Treasury, as a little later they refused to accept him as a 
Judge of the Supreme Court. They passed a solemn vote 
of censure on the President, whose action they character- 
ized, in defiance of the facts, as unconstitutional. But 
Jackson, strong in the support of the nation, could afford 
to disregard such natural ebullitions of bad temper. The 
charter of the bank lapsed and was not renewed, and a 
few years later it wound up its affairs amid a reeking 
scandal, which sufficed to show what manner of men they 
were who had once captured Congress and attempted to 
dictate to the President. The Whigs were at last com- 
pelled to drink the cup of humiliation to the dregs. An- 
other election gave Jackson a majority even in the Sen- 
ate, and in spite of the protests of Clay, Webster and 
Calhoun the censure on the President was solemnly ex- 
punged from its records. 

After the triumphant termination of the bank, Jack- 
son's second term of office was peaceful and compara- 
tively uneventful. There were indeed some important 
questions of domestic and foreign policy with which it 
fell to him to deal. One of these was the position of the 
Cherokee Indians, who had been granted territory in 
Georgia and the right to live on their own lands there, 
but whom the expansion of civilization had now made it 
convenient to displace. It is impossible for an admirer 
of Jackson to deny that his attitude in such a matter 
was too much that of a frontiersman. Indeed, it is a 
curious irony that the only American statesman of that 
age who showed any disposition to be careful of justice 
and humanity in dealing with the native race was John C. 
Calhoun, the uncompromising defender of negro slavery. 
At any rate the Indians were, in defiance, it must be said, 
of the plain letter of the treaty, compelled to choose 



156 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

between submission to the laws of Georgia and trans- 
plantation beyopd the Mississippi. Most of them were 
in the event transplanted. 

Jackson's direction of foreign policy was not only 
vigorous but sagacious. Under his Presidency long- 
standing disputes with both France and England were 
brought to a peaceful termination on terms satisfactory 
to the Republic. To an Englishman it is pleasant to 
note that the great President, though he had fought 
against the English — perhaps because he had fought 
against them — was notably far from that rooted an- 
tipathy to Great Britain which was conspicuous in most 
patriotic Americans of that age and indeed down to 
very recent times. "With Great Britain, alike distin- 
guished in peace and war," he wrote in a message to 
Congress, "we may look forward to years of peaceful, 
honourable, and elevated competition. Everything in 
the condition and history of the two nations is calculated 
to inspire sentiments of mutual respect and to carry con- 
viction to the minds of both that it is their policy to 
preserve the most cordial relations." It may also be of 
some interest to quote the verdict of an English states- 
man, who, differing from Jackson in all those things in 
which an aristocratic politician must necessarily differ 
from the tribune of a democracy, had nevertheless some- 
thing of the same symbolic and representative national 
character and something of the same hold upon his fel- 
low-countrymen. A letter from Van Buren, at that time 
representing the United States at the Court of St. James's, 
to Jackson reports Palmerston as saying to him that 
"a very strong impression had been made here of the 
dangers which this country had to apprehend from your 
elevation, but that they had experienced better treat- 



THE JACKSONIAN REVOLUTION 157 

ment at your hands than they had done from any of your 
predecessors." 

So enormous was Jackson's popularity that, if he had 
been the ambitious Caesarist that his enemies represented, 
he could in all probability have safely violated the Wash- 
ington-Jefferson precedent and successfully sought a 
third term. But he showed no desire to do so. He had 
undergone the labours of a titan for twelve eventful and 
formative years. He was an old man; he was tired. 
He may well have been glad to rest for what years were 
left to him of life in his old frontier State, which he had 
never ceased to love. He survived his Presidency by 
nine years. Now and then his voice was heard on a pub- 
lic matter, and, whenever it was heard, it carried every- 
where a strange authority as if it were the people speak- 
ing. But he never sought public office again. 

Jackson's two periods of office mark a complete revolu- 
tion in American institutions; he has for the Republic as 
it exists to-day the significance of a second founder. 
From that period dates the frank abandonment of the 
fiction of the Electoral College as an independent deliber- 
ative assembly, and the direct and acknowledged election 
of the nation's Chief Magistrate by the nation itself. In 
the constitution of the Democratic Party, as it grouped 
itself round him, we get the first beginnings of the 
"primary," that essential organ of direct democracy of 
which English Parliamentarism has no hint, but which is 
the most vital feature of American public life. But, 
most of all, from his triumph and the abasement of his 
enemies dates the concentration of power in the hands 
of the President as the real unifying centre of authority. 
His attitude towards his Cabinet has been imitated by 
all strong Presidents since. America does not take kindly 
to a President who shirks personal responsibility or hides 



158 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

behind his ministers. Nothing helped Lincoln's popu- 
larity more than the story — apocryphal or no — of his 
taking the vote of his Cabinet on a proposition of his 
own and then remarking: "Ayes one; Noes six. The 
Ayes have it." Even the "Spoils System," whatever its 
evils, tended to strengthen the Elect of the People. It 
made the power of an American President more directly 
personal than that of the most despotic rulers of Conti- 
nental Europe; for they are always constrained by a 
bureaucracy, while his bureaucracy even down to its 
humblest members is of his own appointment and de- 
pendent on him. 

The party, or rather coalition, which opposed these 
changes, selected for itself, as has been seen, the name 
of "Whig." The name was, perhaps, better chosen than 
the American Whigs realized. They meant — and it was 
true as far as it went — that like the old English Whigs 
they stood for free government by deliberative assem- 
blies against arbitrary personal power. They were not 
deep enough in history to understand that they also 
stood, like the old English Whigs, for oligarchy against 
the instinct and tradition of the people. There is a 
strange irony about the fate of the parties in the two 
countries. In the Monarchy an aristocratic Parliamen- 
tarism won, and the Crown became a phantom. In the 
Republic a popular sovereignty won, and the President 
became more than a King. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE SPOILS OF MEXICO 

The extent of Jackson's more than monarchical power 
is well exemplified by the fact that Van Buren succeeded 
him almost as a king is succeeded by his heir. Van 
Buren was an apt master of electioneering and had a 
strong hold upon the democracy of New York. He 
occupied in the new Democratic Party something of the 
position which Burr had occupied in the old. But while 
Burr had sought his own ends and betrayed, Van Buren 
was strictly loyal to his chief. He was a sincere demo- 
crat and a clever man; but no one could credit him with 
the great qualities which the wielding of the immense new 
power created by Jackson seemed to demand. None the 
less he easily obtained the Presidency as Jackson's nomi- 
nee. Since the populace, whose will Jackson had made 
the supreme power in the State, could not vote for him, 
they were content to vote for the candidate he was 
known to favour. 

Indeed, in some ways the coalition which called itself 
the Whig party was weakened rather than strengthened 
by the substitution of a small for a great man at the head 
of the Democracy. Antagonism to Jackson was the real 
cement of the coalition, and some of its members did 
not feel called upon to transfer their antagonism un- 
abated to Van Buren. 

The most eminent of these was Calhoun, who now 
broke away from the Whigs and appeared prepared to 

159 



160 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

give a measure of independent support to the Admin- 
istration. He did not, however, throw himself heartily 
into the Democratic Party or seek to regain the succes- 
sion to its leadership which had once seemed likely to 
be his. From the moment of his quarrel with Jackson 
the man changes out of recognition : it is one of the most 
curious transformations in history, like an actor strip- 
ping off his stage costume and appearing as his very 
self. Political compromises, stratagems, ambitions drop 
from him, and he stands out as he appears in that fine 
portrait whose great hollow eyes look down from the 
walls of the Capitol at Washington, the enthusiast, 
almost the fanatic, of a fixed idea and purpose. He is 
no longer national, nor pretends to be. His one thought 
is the defence of the type of civilization which he finds 
in his own State against the growing power of the North, 
which he perceives with a tragic clearness and the prob- 
able direction of which he foresees much more truly than 
did any Northerner of that period. He maintains con- 
tinually, and without blurring its lines by a word of 
reservation or compromise, the dogma of State Sover- 
eignty in its most extreme and almost suicidal form. 
His great pro-Slavery speeches belong to the same period. 
They are wonderful performances, full of restrained elo- 
quence, and rich in lucid argument and brilliant illustra- 
tion. Sincerity shines in every sentence. They serve 
to show how strong a case an able advocate can make out 
for the old pre-Christian basis of European society ; and 
they will have a peculiar interest if ever, as seems not 
improbable, the industrial part of Northern Europe re- 
verts to that basis. 

Van Buren, on the whole, was not an unsuccessful 
President. He had many difficulties to contend with. 
He had to face a serious financial panic, which some con- 



THE SPOILS OF MEXICO 161 

sider to have been the result of Jackson's action in regard 
to the bank, some of the machinations of the bank itself. 
He surmounted it successfully, though not without a 
certain loss of popularity. We English have some rea- 
son to speak well of him in that he resisted the tempta- 
tion to embroil his country with ours when a rebellion 
in Canada offered an opportunity which a less prudent 
man might very well have taken. For the rest he carried 
on the government of the country on Jacksonian lines 
with sufficient fidelity not to forfeit the confidence of the 
old man who watched and advised him, sympathetically 
but not without anxiety, from his "Hermitage" in Ten- 
nessee. 

One singular episode may conveniently be mentioned 
here, though the incident in which it originated rather 
belongs to the Jacksonian epoch. This is not the place 
to discuss the true nature of that curious institution 
called Freemasonry. Whatever its origin, whether re- 
mote and derived from Solomon's Temple as its devotees 
assert, or, as seems more intrinsically probable, compara- 
tively modern and representing one of the hundreds of 
semi-mystical fads which flourished in the age of Cagli- 
ostro, it had acquired considerable importance in Europe 
at the end of the eighteenth century. At some unknown 
date it was carried across the Atlantic, and sprouted 
vigorously in America; but it does not seem to have 
been taken particularly seriously, until the States were 
startled by an occurrence which seemed more like part 
of what is known in that country as "a dime novel" than 
a piece of history. 

A journalist named Morgan, who had been a Free- 
mason, announced his intention of publishing the invio- 
lable secrets of the Society. The announcement does not 
seem to have created any great sensation; probably the 



162 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

majority of Americans were as sceptical as is the present 
writer as to the portentous nature of the awful Unspeak- 
abilities which so many prosperous stock-brokers and 
suburban builders keep locked in their bosoms. But 
what followed naturally created a sensation of the most 
startling kind. For on the morrow of his announce- 
ment Morgan disappeared and never returned. . What 
happened to him is not certainly known. A body was 
found which may or may not have been his. The gen- 
eral belief was that he had been kidnapped and murdered 
by his fellow-Craftsmen, and, indeed, it really seems the 
natural inference from the acknowledged facts that at 
least some one connected with the Brotherhood was re- 
sponsible for his fate. A violent outcry against Masonry 
was the natural result, and, as some of the more promi- 
nent politicians of the day, including President Jackson 
himself, were Masons, the cry took a political form. An 
Anti-Masonic Party was formed, and at the next Presi- 
dential election was strong enough to carry one State 
and affect considerably the vote of others. The move- 
ment gradually died down and the party disappeared ; but 
the popular instinct that secret societies, whether mur- 
derous or not, have no place in a Free State was none 
the less a sound one. 

I have said that Van Buren's election was a sign of 
Jackson's personal influence. But the election of 1840 
was a more startling sign of the completeness of his 
moral triumph, of the extent to which his genius had 
transformed the State. In 1832 the Whigs pitted their 
principles against his and lost. In 1840 they swallowed 
their principles, mimicked his and won. 

The Whig theory — so far as any theory connected the 
group of politicians who professed that name — was that 
Congress and the political class which Congress repre- 



THE SPOILS OF MEXICO 163 

sented should rule, or at least administer, the State. 
From that theory it seemed to follow that some illustri- 
ous Senator or Congressman, some prominent member of 
that political class, should be chosen as President. The 
Whigs had acted in strict accord with their theory when 
they had selected as their candidate their ablest and most 
representative politician, Clay. But the result had not 
been encouraging. They now frankly abandoned their 
theory and sought to imitate the successful practice of 
; their adversaries. They looked round for a Whig Jack- 
son, and they found him in an old soldier from Ohio 
named Harrison, who had achieved a certain military 
reputation in the Indian wars. Following their model 
even more closely, they invented for him the nickname 
of "Old Tippecanoe," derived from the name of one of 
, his victories, and obviously suggested by the parallel of 
1 "Old Hickory." Jackson, however, really had been 
I called "Old Hickory" by his soldiers long before he 
i took a leading part in politics, while it does not appear 
that Harrison was ever called "Tippecanoe" by anybody 
1 except for electioneering purposes. However, the name 
served its immediate purpose, and — 

"Tippecanoe, 
And Tyler too!" 

became the electoral war-cry of the Whigs. Tyler, a 
[ Southern Whig from Virginia, brought into the ticket to 
conciliate the Southern element in the party, was their 
candidate for the Vice-Presidency. 

Unfortunately for themselves, the Democrats played 
the Whig game by assailing Harrison with very much 
the same taunts which had previously been used by the 
Whigs against Jackson. The ignorance of the old sol- 
dier, his political inexperience, even his poverty and 



164 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

obscurity of origin, were exploited in a hundred Demo- 
cratic pamphlets by writers who forgot that every such 
reflection made closer the parallel between Harrison and 
Jackson, and so brought to the former just the sort of 
support for which the Whigs were angling. 

"Tippecanoe" proved an excellent speculation for the 
Whig leaders. It was "Tyler too," introduced to meet 
the exigencies of electioneering (and rhyme) that alto- 
gether disconcerted all their plans. 

Tyler was a Southerner and an extreme Particularist. 
He had been a Nullifier, and his quarrel with Jackson's 
Democracy had simply been a quarrel with his Unionism. 
His opinions on all subjects, political, administrative, and 
fiscal, were as remote from those of a man like Clay as 
any opinions could be. This was perfectly well known 
to those who chose him for Vice-President. But while 
the President lives and exercises his functions the Vice- 
President is in America a merely ornamental figure. He 
has nothing to say in regard to policy. He is not even 
a member of the Administration. He presides over the 
Senate, and that is all. Consequently there has always 
been a strong temptation for American wire-pullers to 
put forward as candidate for the Vice-Presidency a man 
acceptable to some more or less dubious and detached 
group of their possible supporters, whose votes it is 
desired to obtain, but who are not intended to have any 
control over the effective policy of the Government. Yet 
more than one example has shown how perilous this 
particular electioneering device may turn out to be. For 
if the President should die before the expiration of his 
term, the whole of his almost despotic power passes un- 
impaired to a man who represents not the party, but a 
more or less mutinous minority in the party. 

It was so in this case. Harrison was elected, but 



THE SPOILS OF MEXICO 165 

barely lived to take the oath. Tyler became President. 
For a short time things went comparatively smoothly. 
Harrison had made Webster Secretary of State, and 
Tyler confirmed his appointment. But almost at once it 
became apparent that the President and his Secretary 
differed on almost every important question of the day, 
and that the Whig Party as a whole was with the Secre- 
tary. The President's views were much nearer to those 
of the Democratic opposition, but that opposition, smart- 
ing under its defeat, was not disposed to help either 
combatant out of the difficulties and humiliations which 
had so unexpectedly fallen on both in the hour of tri- 
umph. Yet, if Webster were dismissed or driven to 
resign, some one of note must be found to take his place. 
Personal followers the President had none. But in his 
isolation he turned to the one great figure in American 
politics that stood almost equally alone. It was an- 
nounced that the office vacated by Webster had been 
offered to and accepted by John Caldwell Calhoun. 

Calhoun's acceptance of the post is sometimes treated 
as an indication of the revival of his ambitions for a 
national career. It is suggested that he again saw a 
path open to him to the Presidency which he had cer- 
tainly once coveted. But though his name was men- 
tioned in 1844 as a possible Democratic candidate, it was 
mentioned only to be found wholly unacceptable, and in- 
deed Calhoun's general conduct when Secretary was not 
such as to increase his chances of an office for which 
no one could hope who had not a large amount of North- 
ern as well as Southern backing. It seems more likely 
that Calhoun consented to be Secretary of State as a 
means to a definite end closely connected with what was 
now the master-passion of his life, the defence of 
Southern interests. At any rate, the main practical fruit 



166 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

of his administration of affairs was the annexation of 
Texas. 

Texas had originally been an outlying and sparsely 
peopled part of the Spanish province of Mexico, but 
even before the overthrow of Spanish rule a thin stream 
of immigration had begun to run into it from the 
South-western States of America. The English-speak- 
ing element became, if not the larger part of the scant 
population, at least the politically dominant one. Soon 
after the successful assertion of Mexican independence 
against Spain, Texas, mainly under the leadership of 
her American, settlers, declared her independence of 
Mexico. The occasion of this secession was the aboli- 
tion of Slavery by the native Mexican Government, the 
Americans who settled in Texas being mostly slave- 
owners drawn from the Slave States. Some fighting 
took place, and ultimately the independence of Texas 
seems to have been recognized by one of the many gov- 
ernments which military and popular revolutions and 
counter-revolutions rapidly set up and pulled down in 
Mexico proper. The desire of the Texans — or at least 
of that governing part of them that had engineered the 
original secession — was to enter the American Union, 
but there was a prolonged hesitation at Washington 
about admitting them, so that Texas remained for a long 
time the "Lone Star State," independent alike of Mex- 
ico and Washington. This hesitation is difficult at first 
sight to understand, for Texas was undoubtedly a valu- 
able property and its inhabitants were far more willing 
to be incorporated than, say, the French colonists of 
Louisiana had been. The key is, no doubt, to be found 
in the internecine jealousies of the sections. The North 
— or at any rate New England — had been restive over 
the Louisiana purchase as tending to strengthen the 



THE SPOILS OF MEXICO 167 

Southern section at the expense of the Northern. If 
Texas was added to Louisiana the balance would lean 
still more heavily in favour of the South. But what 
was a cause of hesitation to the North and to politicians 
who looked for support to the North was a strong 
recommendation to Calhoun. He had, as he himself 
once remarked, a remarkable gift of foresight — an un- 
comfortable gift, for he always foresaw most clearly the 
things he desired least. He alone seems to have under- 
stood fully how much the South had sacrificed by the 
Missouri Compromise. ' He saw her hemmed in and sta- 
tionary while the North added territory to territory and 
State to State. To annex Texas would be, to an extent 
at least, to cut the bonds which limited her expansion. 
When the population should have increased sufficiently 
it was calculated that at least four considerable States 
could be carved out of that vast expanse of country. 

But, though Calhoun's motive was probably the politi- 
cal strengthening of the South, his Texan policy could 
find plenty of support in every part of the Union. Most 
Northerners, especially in the new States of the North- 
West, cared more for the expansion of the United States 
than for the sectional jealousies. They were quite pre- 
pared to welcome Texas into the Union; but, unfor- 
tunately for Calhoun, they had a favourite project of 
expansion of their own for which they expected a cor- 
responding support. 

The whole stretch of the Pacific slope which intervenes 
between Alaska and California, part of which is no.v 
represented by the States of Washington and Oregon and 
part by British Columbia, was then known generally as 
"Oregon." Its ownership was claimed both by British 
and American Governments upon grounds of prior ex- 
ploration into the merits of which it is hardly necessary 



168 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

to enter here. Both claims were in fact rather shadowy, 
but both claimants were quite convinced that theirs was 
the stronger. For many years the dispute had been 
hung up without being settled, the territory being policed 
jointly by the two Powers. Now, however, there came 
from the Northern expansionists a loud demand for an 
immediate settlement and one decidedly in their favour. 
All territory south of latitude 54 40' must be ac- 
knowledged as American, or the dispute must be left to 
the arbitrament of arms. "Fifty- four- forty or fight!" 
was the almost unanimous cry of the Democracy of the 
North and West. 

The Secretary of State set himself against the North- 
ern Jingoes, and though his motives may have been 
sectional, his arguments were really unanswerable. He 
pointed out that to fight England for Oregon at that 
moment would be to fight her under every conceivable 
disadvantage. An English army from India could be 
landed in Oregon in a few weeks. An American army 
sent to meet it must either round Cape Horn and traverse 
the Atlantic and Pacific oceans in the face of the most 
powerful navy in the world or march through what was 
still an unmapped wilderness without the possibility of 
communications or supports. If, on the other hand, the 
question were allowed to remain in suspense, time would 
probably redress the balance in favour of the United 
States. American expansion would in time touch the 
borders of Oregon, and then the dispute could be taken 
up and settled under much more favourable circum- 
stances. It was a perfectly just argument, but it did not 
convince the "fifty-four-forty-or-fighters," who roundly 
accused the Secretary — and not altogether unjustly — of 
caring only for the expansion of his own section. 

Calhoun was largely instrumental in averting a war 



THE SPOILS OF MEXICO 169 

with England, but he did not otherwise conduct himself 
in such a manner as to conciliate opinion in that country. 
England, possibly with the object of strengthening her 
hand in bargaining for Oregon, had intervened tenta- 
tively in relation to Texas. Lord Aberdeen, then Peel's 
Foreign Secretary, took up that question from the Anti- 
Slavery standpoint, and expressed the hope that the pro- 
hibition of slavery by Mexico would not be reversed if 
Texas became part of the American Union. The inter- 
vention, perhaps, deserved a snub — for, after all, Eng- 
land had only recently emancipated the slaves in her own 
colonies — and a sharp reminder that by the Monroe 
Doctrine, to which she was herself a consenting party, 
no European Power had a right to interfere in the do- 
mestic affairs of an American State. Calhoun did not 
snub Lord Aberdeen : he was too delighted with his lord- 
ship for giving him the opportunity for which he longed. 
But he did a thing eminently characteristic of him, which 
probably no other man on the American continent would 
have done. He sat down and wrote an elaborate and 
very able State Paper setting forth the advantages of 
slavery as a foundation for civilization and public lib- 
erty. It was this extraordinary dispatch that led Macau- 
lay to say in the House of Commons that the American 
Republic had "put itself at the head of the slave-driving 
interest throughout the world as Elizabeth put herself at 
the head of the Protestant interest." As regards Cal- 
houn the charge was perfectly true; and it is fair to 
him to add that he undoubtedly believed in Slavery much 
more sincerely than ever Elizabeth did in Protestantism. 
But he did not represent truly the predominant feeling 
of America. Northern Democratic papers, warmly com- 
mitted to the annexation of Texas, protested vehemently 
against the secretary's private fad concerning the positive 



170 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

blessedness of Slavery being put forward as part of the 
body of political doctrine held by the United States. 
Even Southerners, who accepted Slavery as a more or 
less necessary evil, did not care to see it thus blazoned 
on the flag. But Calhoun was impenitent. He was 
proud of the international performance, and the only 
thing he regretted, as his private correspondence shows, 
was that Lord Aberdeen did not continue the debate 
which he had hoped would finally establish his favourite 
thesis before the tribunal of European opinion. 

Texas was duly annexed, and Tyler's Presidency drew 
towards its close. He seems to have hoped that the 
Democrats whom he had helped to defeat in 1840 would 
accept him as their candidate for a second term in 1844; 
but they declined to do so, nor did they take kindly to 
the suggestion of nominating Calhoun. Instead, they 
chose one Polk, who had been a stirring though not very 
eminent politician in Jacksonian days. The choice is 
interesting as being the first example of a phenomenon 
recurrent in subsequent American politics, the deliberate 
selection of a more or less obscure man on the ground 
of what Americans call "availability." 

It is the product of the convergence of two things — 
the fact of democracy as indicated by the election of a 
First Magistrate by a method already frankly plebisci- 
tary and the effect of a Party System, becoming, as all 
Party Systems must become if they endure, at once in- 
creasingly rigid and increasingly unreal. 

The aim of the party managers — necessarily profes- 
sionals — was to get their party nominee elected. But the 
conditions under which they worked were democratic. 
They could not, as such professionals can in an oligarchy 
like ours, simply order the electors to vote for any nin- 
compoop who was either rich and ambitious enough to 



THE SPOILS OF MEXICO 171 

give them, the professionals, money in return for their 
services, or needy and unscrupulous enough to be their 
hired servant. They were dealing with a free people 
that would not have borne such treatment. They had 
to consider as a practical problem for what men the 
great mass of the party would most readily and effec- 
tively vote. And it was often discovered that while the 
nomination of an acknowledged "leader" led, through the 
inevitable presence (in a Democracy) of conflicts and 
discontents within the party, to the loss of votes, the 
candidate most likely to unite the whole party was one 
against whom no one had any grudge and who simply 
stood for the "platform" which was framed in a very 
democratic fashion by the people themselves voting in 
their "primaries." When this system is condemned and 
its results held up to scorn, it should be remembered that 
among other effects it is certainly responsible for the 
selection of Abraham Lincoln. 

Polk was not a Lincoln, but he was emphatically an 
"available" candidate, and he won, defeating Clay, to 
whom the Whigs had once more reverted, by a formid- 
able majority. He found himself confronted with two 
pressing questions of foreign policy. During the elec- 
tion the Democrats had played the "Oregon" card for all 
it was worth, and the new President found himself 
almost committed to the "forty-seven-forty-or-fight" 
position. But the practical objections to a war with 
England on the Oregon dispute were soon found to be 
just as strong as Calhoun had represented them to be. 
Moreover, the opportunity presented itself for a war at 
once much more profitable and much less perilous than 
such a contest was likely to prove, and it was obvious 
that the two wars could not be successfully undertaken 
at once. 



172 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

The independence of Texas had been in some sort 
recognized by Mexico, but the frontier within which 
that independence formally existed was left quite unde- 
fined, and the Texan view of it differed materially from 
the Mexican. The United States by annexing Texas 
had shouldered this dispute and virtually made it their 
own. 

It is seldom that historical parallels are useful; they 
are never exact. But there are certain real points of 
likeness between the war waged by the United States 
against Mexico in the 'forties and the war waged by 
Great Britain against the Boer Republics between 1899 
and 1902. In both cases it could be plausibly represented 
that the smaller and weaker power was the actual ag- 
gressor. But in both cases there can be little doubt that 
it was the stronger power which desired or at least com- 
placently contemplated war. In both cases, too, the 
defenders of the war, when most sincere, tended to 
abandon their technical pleas and to take their stand 
upon the principle that the interests of humanity would 
best be served by the defeat of a "backward" people by 
a more "progressive" one. It is not here necessary to 
discuss the merits of such a plea. But it may be inter- 
esting to note the still closer parallel presented by the 
threefold division of the opposition in both cases. The 
Whig Party was divided in 1847, almost exactly as was 
the "Liberal" Party in 1899. There was, especially in 
New England, an ardent and sincere minority which was 
violently opposed to the war and openly denounced it as 
an unjustifiable aggression. Its attitude has been made 
fairly familiar to English readers by the first series of 
Lowell's "Bigelow Papers." This minority corresponded 
roughly to those who in England were called "Pro- 
Boers." There was another section which warmly sup- 



THE SPOILS OF MEXICO 173 

ported the war : it sought to outdo the Democrats in their 
patriotic enthusiasm, and to reap as much of the electoral 
harvest of the prevalent Jingoism as might be. Mean- 
while, the body of the party took up an intermediate 
position, criticized the diplomacy of the President, main- 
tained that with better management the war might have 
been avoided, but refused to oppose the war outright 
when once it had begun, and concurred in voting supplies 
for its prosecution. 

The advocates of the war had, however, to face at its 
outset one powerful and unexpected defection, that of 
Calhoun. No man had been more eager than he for the 
annexation of Texas, but, Texas once annexed, he 
showed a marked desire to settle all outstanding ques- 
tions with Mexico quickly and by a compromise on easy 
terms. He did all he could to avert war. When war 
actually came, he urged that even the military operations 
of the United States should be strictly defensive, that 
they should confine themselves to occupying the disputed 
territory and repelling attacks upon it, but should under 
no circumstances attempt a counter invasion of Mexico. 
There can be little doubt that Calhoun's motive in pro- 
posing this curious method of conducting a war was, as 
usual, zeal for the interests of his section, and that he 
acted as he did because he foresaw the results of an 
extended war more correctly than did most Southerners. 
He had coveted Texas because Texas would strengthen 
the position of the South. Slavery already existed there, 
and no one doubted that if Texas came into the Union at 
all it must be as a Slave State. But it would be other- 
wise if great conquests were made at the expense of 
Mexico. Calhoun saw clearly that there would be a 
strong movement to exclude slavery from such conquests, 
and, having regard to the numerical superiority of the 



174 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

North, he doubted the ability of his own section to obtain 
in the scramble that must follow the major part of the 
spoil. 

Calhoun, however, was as unable to restrain by his 
warnings the warlike enthusiasm of the South as were 
the little group of Peace Whigs in New England to pre- 
vent the North from being swept by a similar passion. 
Even Massachusetts gave a decisive vote for war. 

The brief campaign was conducted with considerable 
ability, mainly by Generals Taylor and Scott. Such 
army as Mexico possessed was crushingly defeated at 
Monterey. An invasion followed, and the fall of Mex- 
ico City completed the triumph of American arms. 
By the peace dictated in the captured capital Mexico had, 
of course, to concede the original point of dispute in 
regard to the Texan frontier. But greater sacrifices 
were demanded of her, though not without a measure 
of compensation. She was compelled to sell at a fixed 
price to her conqueror all the territory to which she laid 
claim on the Pacific slope north of San Diego. Thus 
Arizona, New Mexico, and, most important of all, Cali- 
fornia passed into American hands. 

But before this conclusion had been reached a signifi- 
cant incident justified the foresight of Calhoun. To- 
wards the close of the campaign, a proposal made in 
Congress to grant to the Executive a large supply to be 
expended during the recess at the President's discretion 
in purchasing Mexican territory was met by an amend- 
ment moved by a Northern Democrat named Wilmot, 
himself an ardent supporter of the war, providing that 
from all territory that might be so acquired from Mexico 
Slavery should be for ever excluded. The proviso was 
carried in the House of Representatives by a majority 
almost exactly representative of the comparative strength 



THE SPOILS OF MEXICO 175 

of the two sections. How serious the issue thus raised 
was felt to be is shown by the fact that the Executive 
preferred dispensing with the money voted to allowing 
it to be pushed further. In the Senate both supply and 
condition were lost. But the "Wilmot Proviso" had 
given the signal for a sectional struggle of which no man 
could foresee the end. 

Matters were further complicated by a startlingly un- 
expected discovery. On the very day on which peace 
was proclaimed, one of the American settlers who had 
already begun to make their way into California, in 
digging for water on his patch of reclaimed land, turned 
up instead a nugget of gold. It was soon known to the 
ends of the earth that the Republic had all unknowingly 
annexed one of the richest goldfields yet discovered. 
There followed all the familiar phenomena which Aus- 
tralia had already witnessed, which South Africa was 
later to witness, and which the Klondike has witnessed in 
our time. A stream of immigrants, not only from every 
part of the United States but from every part of the 
civilized world, began to pour into California drunk with 
the hope of immediate and enormous gains. Instead of 
the anticipated gradual development of the new territory, 
which might have permitted considerable delay and much 
cautious deliberation in the settlement of its destiny, 
one part of that territory at least found itself within a 
year the home of a population already numerous enough 
to be entitled to admission to the Union as a State, a 
population composed in great part of the most restless 
and lawless of mankind, and urgently in need of some 
sort of properly constituted government. 

A Convention met to frame a plan of territorial ad- 
ministration, and found itself at once confronted with 
the problem of the admission or exclusion of Slavery. 



176 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

Though many of the delegates were from the Slave 
States, it was decided unanimously to exclude it. There 
was nothing sentimentally Negrophil about the attitude 
of the Californians; indeed, they proclaimed an exceed- 
ingly sensible policy in the simple formula : "No Niggers, 
Slave or Free!" But as regards Slavery their decision 
was emphatic and apparently irreversible. 

The Southerners were at once angry and full of 
anxiety. It seemed that they had been trapped, that vic- 
tories won largely by Southern valour were to be used 
to disturb still more the balance already heavily inclining 
to the rival section. In South Carolina, full of the tra- 
dition of Nullification, men already talked freely of 
Secession. The South, as a whole, was not yet prepared 
for so violent a step, but there was a feeling in the air 
that the type of civilization established in the Slave 
States might soon have to fight for its life. 

On the top of all this vague unrest and incipient division 
came a Presidential election, the most strangely unreal in 
the whole history of the United States. The issue about 
which alone all men, North and South, were thinking, 
was carefully excluded from the platforms and speeches 
of either party. Every one of either side professed un- 
bounded devotion to the Union, no one dared to permit 
himself the faintest allusion to the hot and human pas- 
sions which were patently tearing it in two. The Whigs, 
divided on the late war, divided on Slavery, divided on 
almost every issue by which the minds of men were 
troubled, yet resolved to repeat the tactics which had 
succeeded in 1840. And the amazing thing is that they 
did in fact repeat them and with complete success. They 
persuaded Zachary Taylor, the victor of Monterey, to 
come forward as their candidate. Taylor had shown 
himself an excellent commander, but what his political 



THE SPOILS OF MEXICO 177 

opinions might be no one knew, for it transpired that 
he had never in his life even recorded a vote. The 
Whigs, however, managed to extract from him the state- 
ment that if he had votea ^t the election of 1844 — as, in 
fact, he had not — it would have been for Clay rather 
than for Polk ; and this admission they proceeded, rather 
comically, to trumpet to the world as a sufficient guaran- 
tee from "a consistent and truth-speaking man" of the 
candidate's lifelong devotion to "Whig" principles. 
Nothing further than the above remark and the frank 
acknowledgment that he was a slave-owner could be 
extracted from Taylor in the way of programme or pro- 
fession of faith. . But the Convention adopted him with 
acclamation. Naturally such a selection did not please 
the little group of Anti-War Whigs — a group which was 
practically identical with the extreme Anti-Slavery wing 
of the party — and Lowell, in what is perhaps the most 
stinging of all his satires, turned Taylor's platform or 
absence of platform to ridicule in lines known to thou- 
sands of Englishmen who know nothing of their occa- 
sion : — 

"Ez fer my principles, I glory 
In hevin' nothin' of the sort. 
I ain't a Whig, I ain't a Tory, 
I'm jest a — Candidate in short." 

"Monterey," however, proved an even more successful 
election cry than "Tippecanoe." The Democrats tried 
to play the same game by putting forward General Cass, 
who had also fought with some distinction in the Mexi- 
can war and had the advantage — if it were an advantage 
— of having really proved himself a stirring Democratic 
partisan as well. But Taylor was the popular favourite, 
and the Whigs by the aid of his name carried the elec- 
tion. 



178 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

He turned out no bad choice. For the brief period 
during which he held the Presidential office he showed 
considerable firmness and a sound sense of justice, and 
seems to have been sincerely determined to hold himself 
strictly impartial as between the two sections into which 
the Union was becoming every day more sharply divided. 
Those who expected, on the strength of his blunt avowal 
of slave-owning, that he would show himself eager to 
protect and extend Slavery were quite at fault. He de- 
clared with the common sense of a soldier that California 
must come into the Union, as she wished to come in, as 
a Free State, and that it would be absurd as well as 
monstrous to try and compel her citizens to be slave- 
owners against their will. But he does not appear to 
have had any comprehensive plan of pacification to offer 
for the quieting of the distracted Union, and, before he 
could fully develop his policy, whatever it may have 
been, he died and bequeathed his power to Millard 
Fillmore, the Vice-President, a typical "good party man" 
without originality or initiative. 

The sectional debate had by this time become far more 
heated and dangerous than had been the debates which 
the Missouri compromise had settled thirty years before. 
The author of the Missouri compromise still lived, and, 
as the peril of the Union became desperate, it came to 
be said more and more, even by political opponents, that 
he and he alone could save the Republic. Henry Clay, 
since his defeat in 1844, had practically retired from 
the active practice of politics. He was an old man. 
His fine physique had begun to give way, as is often the 
case with such men, under the strain of a long life that 
had been at once laborious and self-indulgent. But he 
heard in his half-retirement the voice of the nation call- 
ing for him, and he answered. His patriotism had 



THE SPOILS OF MEXICO 179 

always been great, great also his vanity. It must have 
been strangely inspiring to him, at the end of a career 
which, for all its successes, was on the whole a failure — 
for the great stake for which he played was always 
snatched from him — to live over again the great triumph 
of his youth, and once more to bequeath peace, as by 
his last testament, to a distracted nation. God allowed 
him that not ignoble illusion, and mercifully sent him 
to his rest before he could know that he had failed. 

The death of Taylor helped Clay's plans; for the 
soldier-President had discovered a strong vein of obsti- 
nacy. He had his own views on the question, and was 
by no means disposed to allow any Parliamentary leader 
to override them. Fillmore was quite content to be an 
instrument in the hands of a stronger man, and, after 
his succession, Clay had the advantage of the full support 
of the Executive in framing the lines of the last of his 
great compromises. 

In the rough, those lines were as follows. California 
:is to be admitted at once, and on her own terms, as a 
free state, Arizona and New Mexico were to be open 
to Slavery if they should desire its introduction; their 
Territorial Governments, when formed, were to decide 
the question. This adjustment of territory was to be 
accompanied by two balancing measures dealing with 
two other troublesome problems which had been found 
productive of much friction and bitterness. The Dis- 
trict of Columbia — that neutralized territory in which 
the city of Washington stood — having been carved out 
of two Slave States, was itself within the area of legal- 
ized Slavery. But it was more than that. It was what 
we are coming to call, in England, a "Labour Exchange." 
In fact, it was the principal slave mart of the South, and 
slave auctions were carried on at the very doors of the 



180 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

Capitol, to the disgust of many who were not violent in 
their opposition to Slavery as a domestic institution. To 
this scandal Clay proposed to put an end by abolishing 
the Slave Trade in the District of Columbia. Slavery 
was still to be lawful there, but the public sale and pur- 
chase of slaves was forbidden. In return for this con- 
cession to Anti-Slavery sentiment, a very large counter- 
concession was demanded. As has already been said, 
the Constitution had provided in general terms for the 
return of fugitive slaves who escaped from Slave States 
into the Free. But for reasons and in a fashion which 
it will be more convenient to examine in the next chapter, 
this provision of the Constitution had been virtually 
nullified by the domestic legislation of many Northern 
States. To put an end to this, Clay proposed a Fugitive 
Slave Law which imposed on the Federal Government 
the duty of recovering escaped slaves, and authorized 
the agents of that Government to do so without refer- 
ence to the Court or Legislature of the State in which 
the slave might be seized. 

The character of the settlement showed that its au- 
thor's hand had in no way forgotten its cunning in such 
matters. As in the Missouri Compromise, every clause 
shows how well he had weighed and judged the condi- 
tions under which he was working, how acutely he 
guessed the points upon which either side could be pre- 
suaded to give way, and the concessions for which 
either would think worth paying a high price. And 
in fact his settlement was at the time accepted by the 
great mass of Union-loving men, North and South. 
Some Northern States, and especially Massachusetts, 
showed a disposition to break away under what seemed 
to them the unbearable strain of the Fugitive Slave 
Law.. But in dealing with Massachusetts Clay found 



THE SPOILS OF MEXICO 181 

a powerful ally in Webster. That orator was her 
own son, and a son of whom she was immensely proud. 
He had, moreover, throughout his public life, avowed 
himself a convinced opponent of slavery. When, there- 
fore, he lent the weight of his support to Clay's scheme 
he carried with him masses of Northern men whom no 
one else could have persuaded. He proclaimed his ad- 
hesion to the Compromise in his famous speech of the 
7th of March — one of the greatest that he ever delivered. 
It was inevitable that his attitude should be assailed, and 
the clamour raised against him by the extreme Anti- 
Slavery men at the time has found an echo in many sub- 
sequent histories of the period. He is accused of having 
sold his principles in order that he might make an un- 
scrupulous bid for the Presidency. That he desired to 
be President is true, but it is not clear that the 7th of 
March speech improved his chances of it; indeed, the re- 
verse seems to have been the case. A candid examination 
of the man and his acts will rather lead to the conclusion 
that throughout his life he was, in spite of his really 
noble gift of rhetoric, a good deal more of the profes- 
sional lawyer-politician than his admirers have generally 
been disposed to admit, but that his "apostasy" of 1850 
was, perhaps, the one act of that life which was least 
influenced by professional motives and most by a genu- 
ine conviction of the pressing need of saving the Union. 
The support of a Southern statesman of like authority 
might have done much to give finality to the settlement. 
But the one Southerner who carried weight comparable 
to that of Webster in the North was found among its 
opponents. A few days after Webster had spoken, the 
Senate listened to the last words of Calhoun. He was 
already a dying man. He could not even deliver his final 
protest with his own lips. He sat, as we can picture 



182 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

him, those great, awful eyes staring haggardly without 
hope into nothingness, while a younger colleague read 
that protest for him to the Assembly that he had so often 
moved, yet never persuaded. Calhoun rejected the set- 
tlement; indeed, he rejected the whole idea of a terri- 
torial settlement on Missouri lines. It is fair to his 
sagacity to remember that the mania for trying to force 
Slavery on unsuitable and unwilling communities which 
afterwards took possession of those who led the South 
to disaster could claim no authority from him. His own 
solution is to be found in the "Testament" published 
after his death— an amazing solution, based on the prece- 
dent of the two Roman Consuls, whereby two Presidents 
were to be elected, one by the North and one by the 
South, with a veto on each other's acts. He probably 
did not expect that the wild proposal would be accepted 
Indeed, he did not expect that anything that he loved 
would survive. With all his many errors on his head 
there was this heroic thing about the man— that he was 
one of those who can despair of the Republic and yet 
not desert it. With an awful clearness he saw the 
future as it was to be, the division becoming ever wider 
the contest more bitter, the sword drawn, and at the 
last— defeat. In the sad pride and defiance of his dying 
speech one catches continually an echo of the tragic 
avowal of Hector: "For in my heart and in my mind I 
know that Troy shall fall." 

He delivered his soul, and went away to die. And the 
State to which he had given up everything showed its 
thought of him by carving above his bones, as sufficient 
epitaph, the single word : "CALHOUN" 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE SLAVERY QUESTION 

The compromise of 1850, though welcomed on all sides 
as a final settlement, failed as completely as the Missouri 
compromise had succeeded. It has already been said 
that the fault was not in any lack of skill in the actual 
framing of the plan. As a piece of political workman- 
ship it was even superior to Clay's earlier masterpiece, 
as the rally to it at the moment of all but the extreme 
factions, North and South, sufficiently proves. That it 
did not stand the wear of a few years as well as the 
earlier settlement had. stood the wear of twenty was 
due to a change in conditions, and to understand that 
change it is necessary to take up again the history of 
the Slavery Question where the founders of the Repub- 
lic left it. 

It can hardly be said that these great men were wrong 
in tolerating Slavery. Without such toleration at the 
time the Union could not have been achieved and the 
American Republic could not have come into being. But 
it can certainly be said that they were wrong in the cal- 
culation by means of which they largely justified such 
toleration not so much to their critics as to their own 
consciences. They certainly expected, when they per- 
mitted Slavery for a season, that Slavery would gradu- 
ally weaken and disappear. But as a fact it strength- 
ened itself, drove its roots deeper, gained a measure of 
moral prestige, and became every year harder to destroy. 

183 



184 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

Whence came their miscalculation? In part no doubt 
it was connected with that curious and recurrent illusion 
which postulates in human affairs a thing called "Prog- 
ress." This illusion, though both logically and prac- 
tically the enemy of reform — for if things of themselves 
tend to grow better, why sweat and agonize to improve 
them?— is none the less characteristic, generally speak- 
ing, of reforming epochs, and it was not without its hold 
over the minds of the American Fathers. But there 
were also certain definite causes, some of which they 
could hardly have foreseen, some of which they might, 
which account for the fact that Slavery occupied a dis- 
tinctly stronger position halfway through the nineteenth 
century than it had seemed to do at the end of the 
eighteenth. 

The main cause was an observable fact of psychology, 
of which a thousand examples could be quoted, and 
which of itself disposes of the whole "Progressive" thesis 
— the ease with which the human conscience gets used 
to an evil. Time, so far from being a remedy — as the 
"Progressives" do vainly talk — is always, while no 
remedy is attempted, a factor in favour of the disease. 
We have seen this exemplified in the course of the present 
war. The mere delay in the punishment of certain gross 
outrages against the moral traditions of Europe has 
made those outrages seem just a little less horrible than 
they seemed at first, so that men can even bear to con- 
template a peace by which their authors should escape 
punishment — a thing which would have been impossible 
while the anger of decent men retained its virginity. So 
it was with Slavery. Accepted at first as an unques- 
tionable blot on American Democracy, but one which 
could not at the moment be removed, it came gradually to 
seem something normal. A single illustration will show 



THE SLAVERY QUESTION 185 

the extent of this decline in moral sensitiveness. In the 
first days of the Republic Jefferson, a Southerner and a 
slave-owner, could declare, even while compromising 
with Slavery, that he trembled for his country when he 
remembered that God was just, could use of the peril of 
a slave insurrection this fine phrase : "The Almighty has 
no attribute that could be our ally in such a contest" 
Some sixty years later, Stephen Douglas, as sincere a 
democrat as Jefferson, and withal a Northerner with 
no personal interest in Slavery, could ask contemptuously 
whether if Americans were fit to rule themselves they 
were not fit to rule "a few niggers." 

The next factor to be noticed was that to which Jef- 
ferson referred in the passage quoted above — the constant 
dread of a Negro rising. Such a rising actually took place 
in Virginia in the first quarter of the nineteenth century. 
It was a small affair, but the ghastly massacre of whites 
which accompanied it was suggestive of the horrors that 
might be in store for the South in the event of a more 
general movement among the slaves. The debates which 
this crisis produced in the Virginian legislature are of 
remarkable interest. They show how strong the feeling 
against Slavery as an institution still was in the greatest 
of Slave States. Speaker after speaker described it as 
a curse, as a permanent peril, as a "upas tree" which 
must be uprooted before the State could know peace and 
security. Nevertheless they did not uproot it. And from 
the moment of their refusal to uproot it or even to make 
a beginning of uprooting it they found themselves com- 
mitted to the opposite policy which could only lead to 
its perpetuation. From the panic of that moment date 
the generality of the Slave Codes which so many of the 
Southern States adopted — codes deliberately framed to 
prevent any improvement in the condition of the slave 



186 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

population and to make impossible even their peaceful 
and voluntary emancipation. 

There was yet another factor, the economic one, which 
to most modern writers, starting from the basis of his- 
torical materialism, has necessarily seemed the chief of 
all. It was really, I think, subsidiary, but it was present, 
and it certainly helped to intensify the evil. It consisted 
in the increased profitableness of slavery, due, on the one 
hand, to the invention in America of Whitney's machine 
for extracting cotton, and, on the other, to the industrial 
revolution in England, and the consequent creation in 
Lancashire of a huge and expanding market for the 
products of America slave labour. This had a double 
effect. It not only strengthened Slavery, but also 
worsened its character. In place of the generally mild 
and paternal rule of the old gentlemen-planters came in 
many parts of the South a brutally commercial regime, 
which exploited and used up the Negro for mere profit. 
It was said that in this further degradation of Slavery 
the agents were often men from the commercial North ; 
nor can this be pronounced a mere sectional slander in 
view of the testimony of two such remarkable witnesses 
as Abraham Lincoln and Mrs. Beecher Stowe. 

All these things tended to establish the institution of 
Slavery in the Southern States. Another factor which, 
whatever its other effects, certainly consolidated South- 
ern opinion in its defence, was to be found in the activi- 
ties of the Northern Abolitionists. 

In the early days of the Republic Abolition Societies 
had existed mainly, if not exclusively, in the South. 
This was only natural, for, Slavery having disappeared 
from the Northern States, there was no obvious motive 
for agitating or discussing its merits, while south of the 
Mason-Dixon line the question was still a practical one. 



THE SLAVERY QUESTION 187 

The Southern Abolitionists do not appear to have been 
particularly unpopular with their fellow-citizens. They 
were perhaps regarded as something of cranks, but as 
well-meaning cranks whose object was almost every- 
where admitted to be theoretically desirable. At any 
rate there is not the suspicion of any attempt to suppress 
them; indeed, the very year before the first number of the 
Liberator was published in Boston, a great Conference 
of Anti-Slavery Societies, comprising delegates from 
every part of the South, met at Baltimore, the capital 
city of the Slave State of Maryland. 

Northern Abolitionism was, however, quite a differ- 
ent thing. It owed its inception to William Lloyd Gar- 
rison, one of those enthusiasts who profoundly affect 
history solely by the tenacity with which they hold to 
and continually enforce a burning personal conviction. 
But for that tenacity and the unquestionable influence 
which his conviction exerted upon men, he would be a 
rather ridiculous figure, for he was almost every sort 
of crank — certainly a non-resister, and, I think, a vege- 
tarian and teetotaller as well. But his burning conviction 
was the immorality of Slavery; and by this he meant 
something quite other than was meant by Jefferson or 
later by Lincoln. When these great men spoke of Slavery 
as a wrong, they regarded it as a social and political 
wrong, an evil and unjust system which the community 
as a community ought as soon as possible to abolish and 
replace by a better. But by Garrison slave-holding was 
accounted a personal sin like murder or adultery. The 
owner of slaves, unless he at once emancipated them at 
whatever cost to his own fortunes, was by that fact a 
wicked man, and if he professed a desire for ultimate 
extinction of the institution, that only made him a hypo- 
crite as well. This, of course, was absurd; fully as 



188 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

absurd as the suggestion sometimes made in regard to 
wealthy socialists, that if they were consistent they would 
give up all their property to the community. A man 
living under an economic system reposing on Slavery 
can no more help availing himself of its fruits than in 
a capitalist society he can help availing himself of capi- 
talist organization. Obviously, unless he is a multi-mil- 
lionaire, he cannot buy up all the slaves in the State and 
set them free, while, if he buys some and treats them 
with justice and humanity, he is clearly making things 
better for them than if he left them in the hands of mas- 
ters possibly less scrupulous. But, absurd as the thesis 
was, Garrison pushed it to its wildest logical conclusions. 
No Christian Church ought, he maintained, to admit a 
slave-owner to communion. No honest man ought to 
count a slave-owner among his friends. No political 
connection with slave-owners was tolerable. The Union, 
since it involved such a connection, was "a Covenant 
with Death and an Agreement with Hell." Garrison pub- 
licly burnt the Constitution of the United States in the 
streets of Boston. 

Abolitionist propaganda of this kind was naturally pos- 
sible only in the North. Apart from all questions of 
self-interest, no Southerner, no reasonable person who 
knew anything about the South, though the knowledge 
might be as superficial and the indignation against Sla- 
very as intense as was Mrs. Beecher Stowe's, could pos- 
sibly believe the proposition that all Southern slave-own- 
ers were cruel and unjust men. But that was not all. 
Garrison's movement killed Southern Abolitionism. It 
may, perhaps, be owned that the Southern movement 
was not bearing much visible fruit. There was just a 
grain of truth, it may be, in Garrison's bitter and exag- 
gerated taunt that the Southerners were ready enough to 



THE SLAVERY QUESTION 189 

be Abolitionists if they were allowed "to assign the guilt 
of Slavery to a past generation, and the duty of emanci- 
pation to a future generation." Nevertheless that move- 
ment was on the right lines. It was on Southern ground 
that the battle for the peaceful extinction of Slavery 
ought to have been fought. The intervention of the 
North would probably in any case have been resented; 
accompanied by a solemn accusation of specific personal 
immorality it was maddeningly provocative, for it could 
not but recall to the South the history of the issue as it 
stood between the sections. For the North had been the 
original slave-traders. The African Slave Trade had 
been their particular industry. Boston itself, when the 
new ethical denunciation came, had risen to prosperity 
on the profits of that abominable traffic. Further, even 
in the act of clearing its own borders of Slavery, the 
North had dumped its Negroes on the South. "What," 
asked the Southerners, "could exceed the effrontery of 
men who reproach us with grave personal sin in owning 
property which they themselves have sold us and the 
price of which is at this moment in their pockets?" 

On a South thus angered and smarting under what it 
felt to be undeserved reproach, yet withal somewhat un- 
easy in its conscience, for its public opinion in the main 
still thought Slavery wrong, fell the powerful voice of 
a great Southerner proclaiming it "a positive good." 
Calhoun's defence of the institution on its merits prob- 
ably did much to encourage the South to adopt a more 
defiant tone in place of the old apologies for delay in 
dealing with a difficult problem — apologies which sounded 
over-tame and almost humiliating in face of the bold 
invectives now hurled at the slave owners by Northern 
writers and speakers. I cannot, indeed, find that Cal- 
houn's specific arguments, forcible as they were — and 



190 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

they are certainly the most cogent that can be used in 
defence of such a thesis — were particularly popular, or, 
in fact, were ever used by any but himself. Perhaps there 
was a well-founded feeling that they proved too much. 
For Calhoun's case was as strong for white servitude 
as for black : it was a defence, not especially of Negro 
Slavery, but of what Mr. Belloc has called "the servile 
state." More general, in the later Southern defences, 
was the appeal to religious sanctions, which in a nation 
Protestant and mainly Puritan in its traditions naturally 
became an appeal to Bible texts. St. Paul was claimed 
as a supporter of the fugitive slave law on the strength 
of his dealings of Onesimus. But the favourite text was 
that which condemns Ham (assumed to be the ancestor 
of the Negro race) to be "a servant of servants." The 
Abolitionist text-slingers were not a whit more intelli- 
gent; indeed, I think it must be admitted that on the 
whole the pro-Slavery man had the best of this absurd 
form of controversy. Apart from isolated texts they 
had on their side the really unquestionable fact that both 
Old and New Testaments describe a civilization based on 
Slavery, and that in neither is there anything like a clear 
pronouncement that such a basis is immoral or displeas- 
ing to God. It is true that in the Gospels are to be 
found general principles or, at any rate, indications of 
general principles, which afterwards, in the hands of 
the Church, proved largely subversive of the servile 
organization of society; but that is a matter of historical, 
not of Biblical testimony, and would, if followed out, 
have led both Northern and Southern controversialists 
further than either of them wanted to go. 

It would however be hasty, I think, to affirm that even 
to the very end of these processes a majority of South- 
erners thought with Calhoun that Slavery was "a posi- 



THE SLAVERY QUESTION 191 

tive good." The furthest, perhaps, that most of them 
went was the proposition that it represented the only- 
relationship in which white and black races could safely 
live together in the same community — a proposition which 
was countenanced by Jefferson and, to a considerable ex- 
tent at least, by Lincoln. To the last the full Jeffersonian 
view of the inherent moral and social evil of Slavery 
was held by many Southerners who were none the less 
wholeheartedly on the side of their own section in the 
sectional dispute. The chief soldier of the South in the 
war in which that dispute culminated both held that 
view and acted consistently upon it. 

On the North the effect of the new propaganda was 
different, but there also it tended to increase the antago- 
nism of the sections. The actual Abolitionists of the 
school of Garrison were neither numerous nor popular. 
Even in Boston, where they were strongest, they were 
often mobbed and their meetings broken up. In Illinois, 
a Northern State, one of them, Lovejoy, was murdered 
by the crowd. Such exhibitions of popular anger were 
not, of course, due to any love of Slavery. The Aboli- 
tionists were disliked in the North, not as enemies of Sla- 
very, but as enemies of the Union and the Constitution, 
which they avowedly were. But while the extreme doc- 
trine of Garrison and his friends met with little accept- 
ance the renewed agitation of the question did bring into 
prominence the unquestionable fact that the great mass 
of sober Northern opinion thought Slavery a wrong, 
and in any controversy between master and slave was 
inclined to sympathize with the slave. This feeling was 
probably somewhat strengthened by the publication in 
1852 and the subsequent huge international sale of Mrs. 
Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin." The practical effect of 
this book on history is generally exaggerated, partially 



192 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

in consequence of the false view which would make of 
the Civil War a crusade against Slavery. But a certain 
effect it undoubtedly had. To such natural sympathy in 
the main, and not, as the South believes, to sectional 
jealousy and deliberate bad faith, must be attributed 
those "Personal Liberty Laws" by which in many North- 
ern States the provision of the Constitution guarantee- 
ing the return of fugitive slaves was virtually nullified. 
For some of the provisions of those laws an arguable 
constitutional case might be made, particularly for the 
provision which assured a jury trial to the escaped Negro. 
The Negro, it was urged, was either a citizen or a piece of 
property. If he were a citizen, the Constitution expressly 
safeguarded him against imprisonment without such a 
trial. If, on the other hand, he were property, then he 
was property of the value of more than $50, and in cases 
where property of that value was concerned, a jury was 
also legally required. If two masters laid claim to the 
same Negro the dispute between them would have to be 
settled by a jury. Why should it not be so where a mas- 
ter claimed to own a Negro and the Negro claimed to 
own himself? Nevertheless, the effect and to a great ex- 
tent the intention of these laws was to defeat the claim 
of bond fide owners to fugitive slaves, and as such they 
violated at least the spirit of the constitutional compact. 
They therefore afforded a justification for Clay's pro- 
posal to transfer the power of recovering fugitive slaves 
to the Federal authorities. But they also afforded an 
even stronger justification for Lincoln's doubt as to 
whether the American Commonwealth could exist per- 
manently, half slave and half free. 

Finally, among the causes which made a sectional 
struggle the more inevitable must be counted one to 
which allusion has already been made in connection with 



THE SLAVERY QUESTION 193 

the Presidential Election of 1848 — the increasingly pat- 
ent unreality of the existing party system. I have al- 
ready said that a party system can endure only if it be- 
comes unreal, and it may be well here to make clear 
how this is so. 

Fundamental debates in a Commonwealth must be 
settled or the Commonwealth dies. How, for instance, 
could England have endured if, throughout the eigh- 
teenth century, the Stuarts had alternately been restored 
and deposed every seven years? Or, again, suppose a 
dispute so fundamental as that between Collectivism and 
the philosophy of private property. How could a nation 
continue to exist if a Collectivist Government spent five 
years in attempting the concentration of all the means 
of production in the hands of the State and an Anti- 
Collectivist Government spent the next five years in dis- 
persing it again, and so on for a generation? American 
history, being the history of a democracy, illustrates this 
truth with peculiar force. The controversy between Jef- 
ferson and Hamilton was about realities. The Jefferso- 
nians won, and the Federalist Party disappeared. The 
controversy between Jackson and the Whigs was orig- 
inally also real. Jackson won, and the Whigs would have 
shared the fate of the Federalists if they had stood by 
their original principles and refused to accept the conse- 
quences of the Jacksonian Revolution. As a fact, how- 
ever, they did accept these consequences and so the party 
system endured, but at the expense of its reality. There 
was no longer any fundamental difference of principle 
dividing Whigs from Democrats; they were divided 
arbitrarily on passing questions of policy, picked up at 
random and changing from year to year. Meanwhile 
a new reality was dividing the nation from top to bot- 
tom, but was dividing it in a dangerously sectional fash- 



194 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

ion, and for that reason patriotism as well as the require- 
ments of professional politics induced men to veil it 
as much as might be. Yet its presence made the pro- 
fessional play-acting more and more unmeaning and 
intolerable. 

It was this state of things which made possible the 
curious interlude of the "Know-Nothing" movement, 
which cannot be ignored, though it is a kind of digres- 
sion from the main line of historical development. The 
United States had originally been formed by the union 
of certain seceding British colonies, but already, as a 
sort of neutral ground in the New World, their terri- 
tory had become increasingly the meeting-place of streams 
of emigration from various European countries. As 
was natural, a certain amount of mutual jealousy and 
antagonism was making itself apparent as between the 
old colonial population and the newer elements. The 
years following 1847 showed an intensification of the 
problem due to a particular cause. That year saw the 
Black Famine in Ireland and its intensification of the 
insane pedantry and folly of the British Government. 
Innumerable Irish families, driven from the land of their 
birth, found a refuge within the borders of the Repub- 
lic. They brought with them their native genius for 
politics, which for the first time found free outlet in a 
democracy. They were accustomed to act together and 
they were soon a formidable force. This force was re- 
garded by many as a menace, and the sense of menace 
was greatly increased by the fact that these immigrants 
professed a religious faith which the Puritan tradition 
of the States in which they generally settled held in pe- 
culiar abhorrence. 

The "Know-Nothings" were a secret society and 
owed that name to the fact that members, when ques- 



THE SLAVERY QUESTION 195 

tioned, professed to know nothing of the ultimate ob- 
jects of the organization to which they belonged. They 
proclaimed a general hostility to indiscriminate immigra- 
tion, for which a fair-enough case might be made, but 
they concentrated their hostility specially on the Irish 
Catholic element. I have never happened upon any ex- 
planation of the secrecy with which they deliberately 
surrounded their aims. It seems to me, however, that 
a possible explanation lies on the surface. If all they 
had wanted had been to restrict or regulate immigra- 
tion, it was an object which could be avowed as openly 
as the advocacy of a tariff or of the restriction of Sla- 
very in a territory. But if, as their practical operations 
and the general impression concerning their intentions 
seem to indicate, the real object of those who directed 
the movement was the exclusion from public trust of 
persons professing the Catholic religion, then, of course, 
it was an object which could not be avowed without 
bringing them into open conflict with the Constitution, 
which expressly forbade such differentiation on religious 
grounds. 

Between the jealousy of new immigrants felt by the 
descendants of the original colonists and the religious 
antagonism of Puritan New England to the Catholic 
population growing up within its borders, intensified by 
the absence of any genuine issue of debate between the 
official candidates, the Know-Nothings secured at the 
Congressional Election of 1854 a quite startling mea- 
sure of success. But such success had no promise of 
permanence. The movement lived long enough to deal 
a deathblow to the Whig Party, already practically 
annihilated by the Presidential Election of 1852, where- 
in the Democrats, benefiting by the division and con- 



196 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

fusion of their enemies, easily returned their candidate, 
Franklin Pierce. 

It is now necessary to return to the Compromise of 
1850, hailed at the time as a final settlement of the 
sectional quarrel and accepted as such in the platforms 
of both the regular political parties. That Compromise 
was made by one generation. It was to be administered 
by another. Henry Clay, as has already been noted, 
lived long enough to enjoy his triumph, not long enough 
to outlive it. Before a year was out the grave had closed 
over Webster. Calhoun had already passed away, be- 
queathing to posterity his last hopeless protest against 
the triumph of all that he most feared. Congress was 
full of new faces. In the Senate among the rising men 
was Seward of New York, a Northern Whig, whose 
speech in opposition to the Fugitive Slave clause in 
Clay's Compromise had given him the leadership of the 
growing Anti-Slavery opinion of the North. He was 
soon to be joined by Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, 
null in judgment, a pedant without clearness of thought 
or vision, but gifted with a copious command of all the 
rhetoric of sectional hate. The place of Calhoun in the 
leadership of the South had been more and more assumed 
by a soldier who had been forced to change his profes- 
sion by reason of a crippling wound received at Mon- 
terey. Thenceforward he had achieved an increasing re- 
pute in politics, an excellent orator, with the sensitive 
face rather of a poet than of a man of affairs, vivid, 
sincere and careful of honour, though often uncertain in 
temper and judgment, Jefferson Davis of Mississippi. 
But for the moment none of these so dominated poli- 
tics as did the Westerner whom Illinois had recently 
sent to the Senate — Stephen Douglas, surnamed "the 
little Giant." 



THE SLAVERY QUESTION 197 

The physical impression which men seem to have re- 
ceived most forcibly concerning Douglas, and which was 
perhaps responsible for his nickname, was the contrast 
between his diminutive stature and the enormous power 
of his voice — trained no doubt in addressing the mon- 
ster meetings of the West, where tens of thousands 
crowded everywhere to hear him speak. Along with this 
went the sense of an overwhelming vitality about the 
man; he seemed tingling with excess of life. His 
strong, square, handsome face bore a striking resem- 
blance to that of Napoleon Buonaparte, and there was 
really something Napoleonic in his boldness, his instinc- 
tive sense of leadership, and his power of dominating 
weaker men. Withal he was a Westerner — perhaps the 
most typical and complete Westerner in American his- 
tory, for half of Clay was of Washington, and Jackson 
and Lincoln were too great to be purely sectional. He 
had a Westerner's democratic feeling and a Western- 
er's enthusiasm for the national idea. But, especially, 
he had a peculiarly Western vision which is the key to 
a strangely misunderstood but at bottom very consistent 
political career. 

This man, more than any other, fills American history 
during the decade that intervened between the death of 
Clay and the election of Lincoln. That decade is also 
full of the ever-increasing prominence of the Slavery 
Question. It is natural, therefore to read Douglas's 
career in terms of that question, and historians, doing 
so, have been bewildered by its apparent inconsistency. 
Unable to trace any connecting principle in his changes 
of front, they have put them down to interested motives, 
and then equally unable to show that he himself had any- 
thing to gain from them, have been forced to attribute 
them to mere caprice. The fact is that Douglas cannot 



198 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

be understood along those lines at all. To understand 
him one must remember that he was indifferent on the 
Slavery Question, "did not care," as he said, "whether 
Slavery was voted up or voted down," but cared im- 
mensely for something else. That something else was 
the Westward expansion of the American nation till it 
should bridge the gulf between the two oceans. The 
thought of all those millions of acres of virgin land, the 
property of the American Commonwealth, crying out for 
the sower and the reaper, rode his imagination as the 
wrongs of the Negro slave rode the imagination of Gar- 
rison. There is a reality about the comparison which 
few will recognize, for this demagogue, whom men de- 
voted to the Slavery issue thought cynical, had about 
him also something of the fanatic. He could forget all 
else in his one enthusiasm. It is the key to his career 
from the day when he entered Congress clamouring for 
Oregon or war with England to the day when he died ap- 
pealing for soldiers to save the Union in the name of 
its common inheritance. And it is surely not surpris- 
ing that, for the fulfilment of his vision, he was willing 
to conciliate the slave-owners, when one remembers that 
in earlier days he had been willing to conciliate the 
Mormons. 

Douglas stands out in history, as we now see it, as 
the man who by the Kansas and Nebraska Bill upset the 
tottering compromise of 1850. Why did he so upset it? 
Not certainly because he wished to reopen the Slavery 
Question : nothing is less likely, for it was a question 
in which he avowedly felt no interest and the raising of 
which was bound to unsettle his plans. Not from per- 
sonal ambition; for those who accuse him of having 
acted as he did for private advantage have to admit that 
in fact he lost by it. Why then did he so act? I think 



THE SLAVERY QUESTION 199 

we shall get to the root of the matter if we assume that 
his motive in introducing his celebrated Bill was just the 
avowed motive of that Bill and no other. It was to set 
up territorial governments in Kansas and Nebraska. 
Douglas's mind was full of schemes for facilitating the 
march of American civilization westward, for piercing 
the prairies with roads and railways, for opening up 
communications with Oregon and the Pacific slope. 
Kansas and Nebraska were then the outposts of such 
expansion. Naturally he was eager to develop them, 
to encourage squatters to settle within their borders, 
and for that purpose to give the man assured position 
and a form of stable government. If he- could have 
effected this without touching the Slavery Question I 
think that he would gladly have done so. And, as a 
matter of fact, the Nebraska Bill as originally drafted 
by him was innocent of the clause which afterwards 
caused so much controversy. That clause was forced 
on him by circumstances. 

The greater part of the territory which Douglas pro- 
posed to develop lay within the limits of the Louisiana 
Purchase and north of latitude 36 30'. It was there- 
fore free soil by virtue of the Missouri Compromise. 
But the Southerners now disputed the validity of that 
Congressional enactment, and affirmed their right under 
the Constitution as they interpreted it to take and hold 
their "property" in any territories belonging to the United 
States. Douglas had some reason to fear Southern 
opposition to his plans on other grounds, for the South 
would naturally have preferred that the main road to 
the Pacific Slope should run from Tennessee through 
Arizona and New Mexico to California. If Kansas and 
Nebraska were declared closed against slave property 
their opposition would be given a rallying cry and would 



200 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

certainly harden. Douglas therefore proposed a solu- 
tion which would at any rate get rid of the Slavery de- 
bate so far as Congress was concerned, and which had 
also a democratic ring about it acceptable to his West- 
ern instincts and, as he hoped, to his Western following. 
The New Doctrine, called by him that of "Popular 
Sovereignty" and by his critics that of "Squatter Sov- 
ereignty," amounted to this : that the existing settlers in 
the territories concerned should in the act of forming 
their territorial governments decide whether they would 
admit or exclude Slavery. 

It was a plausible doctrine ; but one can only vindicate 
Douglas's motives, as I have endeavoured to do, at the 
expense of his judgment, for his policy had all the con- 
sequences which he most desired to avoid. It produced 
two effects which between them brought the sectional 
quarrel to the point of heat at which Civil War became 
possible and perhaps inevitable. It threw the new terri- 
tories down as stakes to be scrambled for by the rival 
sections, and it created by reaction a new party, neces- 
sarily sectional, having for its object the maintenance 
and reinforcement of the Missouri Compromise. It will 
be well to take the two points separately. 

Up to the passing of the Kansas and Nebraska Law, 
these territories had been populated exactly as such fron- 
tier communities had theretofore been populated, by im- 
migrants from all the States and from Europe who min- 
gled freely, felt no ill-will to each other, and were early 
consolidated by the fact of proximity into a homogeneous 
community. But from the moment of its passage the 
whole situation was altered. It became a political object 
to both sections to get a majority in Kansas. Societies 
were formed in Boston and other Northern cities to 
finance emigrants who proposed to settle there. The 






THE SLAVERY QUESTION 201 

South was equally active, and, to set off against the dis- 
advantage of a less fluid population, had the advantage 
of the immediate proximity of the Slave State of Mis- 
souri. Such a contest, even if peaceably conducted, was 
not calculated to promote either the reconciliation of the 
sections or the solidarity and stability of the new com- 
munity. But in a frontier community without a settled 
government, and with a population necessarily armed for 
self-defence, it was not likely to be peaceably conducted. 
Nor was it. For years Kansas was the scene of what 
can only be described as spasmodic civil war. The Free 
Soil settlement of Lawrence was, after some bloodshed, 
seized and burnt by "border ruffians," as they were 
called, from Missouri. The North cried out loudly 
against "Southern outrages," but it is fair to say that 
the outrages were not all on one side. In fact, the most 
amazing crime in the record of Kansas was committed 
by a Northerner, the notorious John Brown. This man 
presents rather a pathological than a historical problem. 
He had considerable military talents, and a curious 
power of persuading men. But he was certainly mad. 
A New England Puritan by extraction, he was inflamed 
on the subject of Slavery by a fanaticism somewhat simi- 
lar to that of Garrison. But while Garrison blended 
his Abolitionism with the Quaker dogma of Non-Resist- 
ance, Brown blended his with the ethics of a seventeenth- 
century Covenanter who thought himself divinely com- 
manded to hew the Amalekites in pieces before the Lord. 
In obedience to his peculiar code of morals he not only 
murdered Southern immigrants without provocation, 
but savagely mutilated their bodies. If this act did not 
prove him insane his apology would. In defence of his 
conduct he explained that "disguised as a surveyor" he 



202 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

had interviewed his victims and discovered that every 
one of them had "committed murder in his heart." 

The other effect of the Kansas-Nebraska policy was 
the rise of a new party formed for the single purpose 
of opposing it. Anti-slavery parties had already come 
into being from time to time in the North, and had at 
different times exerted a certain influence on elections, 
but they made little headway because they were com- 
posed mainly of extremists, and their aim appeared to 
moderate men inconsistent with the Constitution. The 
attack on the time-honoured Missouri Compromise ral- 
lied such men to the opposition, for it appeared to them 
clearly that theirs was now the legal, Constitutional, and 
even conservative side, and that the Slave Power was 
now making itself responsible for a revolutionary change 
to its own advantage. 

Nor was the charge on the whole unjust. The pro- 
gramme to which the South committed itself after the 
direction of its policy fell from the hands of Calhoun 
was one which the North could not fail to resent. It 
involved the tearing up of all the compromises so elab- 
orately devised and so nicely balanced, and it aimed 
at making Slavery legal certainly in all the new ter- 
ritories and possibly even in the Free States. It was, 
indeed, argued that this did not involve any aggravat- 
ing of the evil of Slavery, if it were an evil. The ar- 
gument will be found very ingeniously stated in the book 
which Jefferson Davis subsequently wrote — professedly 
a history of the Southern Confederacy, really rather an 
Apologia pro Vita Sua. Davis argues that since the 
African Slave Trade was prohibited, there could be no 
increase in the number of slaves save by the ordinary 
process of propagation. The opening of Kansas to Sla- 
very would not therefore mean that there would be more 



THE SLAVERY QUESTION 203 

slaves. It would merely mean that men already and in 
any case slaves would be living in Kansas instead of in 
Tennessee; and, it is further suggested, that the taking of 
a Negro slave from Tennessee where Slavery was rooted 
and normal to Kansas where it was new and exceptional 
would be a positive advantage to him as giving him a 
much better chance of emancipation. The argument 
reads plausibly enough, but it is, like so much of Davis's 
book, out of touch with realities. Plainly it would make 
all the difference in the world whether the practice of, 
say, the Catholic religion were permitted only in Lan- 
cashire or were lawful throughout England, and that 
even though there were no conversions, and the same 
Catholics who had previously lived in Lancashire lived 
wherever they chose. The former provision would imply 
that the British Government disapproved of the Cath- 
olic religion, and would tolerate it only where it was 
obliged to do so. The latter would indicate an attitude 
of indifference towards it. Those who disapproved of 
Slavery naturally wished it to remain a sectional thing 
and objected to its being made national. But the pri- 
mary feeling was that it was the South that had broken 
the truce. The Northerners had much justification in 
saying that their opponents, if not the aggressors in the 
Civil War, were at least the aggressors in the contro- 
versy of which the Civil War was the ultimate outcome. 
Under the impulse of such feelings a party was formed 
which, adopting, without it must be owned any particu- 
lar appropriateness, the old Jeffersonian name of "Re- 
publican," took the field at the Presidential Election of 
1856. Its real leader was Seward of New York, but 
it was thought that electioneering exigencies would be 
better served by the selection of Captain Fremont of 
California, who, as a wandering discoverer and soldier 



204 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

of fortune, could be made a picturesque figure in the pub- 
lic eye. Later, when Fremont was entrusted with high 
military command he was discovered to be neither, capa- 
ble nor honest, but in 1856 he made as effective a figure 
as any candidate could have done, and the results were 
on the whole encouraging to the new party. Buchanan, 
the Democratic candidate, was elected, but the Republi- 
cans showed greater strength in the Northern States than 
had been anticipated. The Whig Party was at this 
election finally annihilated. 

The Republicans might have done even better had the 
decision of the Supreme Court on an issue which made 
clear the full scope of the new Southern claim been 
known just before instead of just after the election. 
This decision was the judgment of Roger Taney, whom 
we have seen at an earlier date as Jackson's Attorney- 
General and Secretary to the Treasury, in the famous 
Dred Scott case. Dred Scott was a Negro slave owned 
by a doctor of Missouri. His master had taken him 
for a time into the free territory of Minnesota, after- 
wards bringing him back to his original State. Dred 
Scott was presumably not in a position to resent either 
operation, nor is it likely that he desired to do so. Later, 
however, he was induced to bring an action in the Fed- 
eral Courts against his master on the ground that by 
being taken into free territory he had ipso facto ceased 
to be a slave. Whether he was put up to this by the 
Anti-Slavery party, or whether — for his voluntary man- 
umission after the case was settled seems to suggest that 
possibility — the whole case was planned by the South- 
erners to get a decision of the territorial question in 
their favour, might be an interesting subject for inquiry. 
I can express no opinion upon it. The main fact is that 
Taney, supported by a bare majority of the judges, not 



THE SLAVERY QUESTION S05 

only decided for the master, but laid down two impor- 
tant principles. One was that no Negro could be an 
American citizen or sue in the American courts. The 
other and more important that the Constitution guaran- 
teed the right of the slave-holder to his slaves in all 
United States territories, and that Congress had no 
power to annul this right. The Missouri Compromise 
was therefore declared invalid. 

Much of the Northern outcry against Taney seems to 
me unjust. He was professedly a judge pronouncing on 
the law, and in giving his ruling he used language which 
seems to imply that his ethical judgment, if he had been 
called upon to give it, would have been quite different. 
But, though he was a great lawyer as well as a sincere 
patriot, and though his opinion is therefore entitled to 
respect, especially from a foreigner ignorant of Ameri- 
can law, it is impossible to feel that his decision was not 
open to criticism on purely legal grounds. It rested 
upon the assertion that property in slaves was "explicitly 
recognized" by the Constitution. If this were so it would 
seem to follow that since under the Constitution a man's 
property could not be taken from him "without due 
process of law" he could not without such process lose 
his slaves. But was it so? It is difficult for a layman 
at any rate to find in the Constitution any such "explicit 
recognition." The slave is there called a "person" and 
defined as a "person bound to service or labour," while 
his master is spoken of as one "to whom such service 
or labour may be due." This language seems to sug- 
gest the relation of creditor and debtor rather than that 
of owner and owned. At any rate, the Republicans re- 
fused to accept the judgment except so far as it deter- 
mined the individual case of Dred Scott, taking up in 
regard to Taney's decision the position which, in accord- 



206 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

ance with Taney's own counsel, Jackson had taken up 
in regard to the decision which affirmed the Constitu- 
tionality of a bank. 

Douglas impetuously accepted the decision and, for- 
getting the precedent of his own hero Jackson, denounced 
all who challenged it as wicked impugners of lawful 
authority. Yet, in fact, the decision was as fatal to his 
own policy as to that of the Republicans. It really made 
"Popular Sovereignty" a farce, for what was the good 
of leaving the question of Slavery to be settled by the 
territories when the Supreme Court declared that they 
could only lawfully settle it one way? This obvious 
point was not lost upon the acute intelligence of one 
man, a citizen of Douglas's own State and one of the 
"moderates" who had joined the Republican Party on 
the Nebraska issue. 

Abraham Lincoln was by birth a Southerner and a 
native of Kentucky, a fact which he never forgot and of 
which he was exceedingly proud. After the wandering 
boyhood of a pioneer and a period of manual labour as' 
a "rail-splitter" he had settled in Illinois, where he had 
picked up his own education and become a successful 
lawyer. He had sat in the House of Representatives 
as a Whig from 1847 to 1849, the period of the Mexi- 
can War, during which he had acted with the main body 
of his party, neither defending the whole of the policy 
which led to the war nor opposing it to the extent of 
refusing supplies for its prosecution. He had voted, as 
he said, for the Wilmot Proviso "as good as fifty times," 
and had made a moderate proposition in relation to 
Slavery in the District of Columbia, for which Garrison's 
Liberator had pilloried him as "the Slave-Hound of 
Illinois." He had not offered himself for re-election 
in 1848. Though an opponent of Slavery on principle, 



THE SLAVERY QUESTION 207 

he had accepted the Compromise of 1850, including its 
Fugitive Slave Clauses, as a satisfactory all-round set- 
tlement, and was, by his own account, losing interest in 
politics when the action of Douglas and its consequences 
called into activity a genius which few, if any, had sus- 
pected. 

A man like Lincoln cannot be adequately described in 
the short space available in such a book as this. His 
externals are well appreciated, his tall figure, his power- 
ful ugliness, his awkward strength, his racy humour, his 
fits of temperamental melancholy; well appreciated also 
his firmness, wisdom and patriotism. But if we wish to 
grasp the peculiar quality which makes him almost 
unique among great men of action, we shall perhaps 
find the key in the fact that his favourite private recre- 
ation was working out for himself the propositions of 
Euclid. Lie had a mind not only peculiarly just but sin- 
gularly logical, one might readily say singularly mathe- 
matical. His reasoning is always so good as to make 
his speeches in contrast to the finest rhetorical oratory 
a constant delight to those who have something of the 
same type of mind. In this he had a certain affinity with 
Jefferson. But while in Jefferson's case the tendency 
has been to class him, in spite of his great practical 
achievements, as a mere theorizer, in Lincoln it has been 
rather to acclaim him as a strong, rough, practical man, 
and to ignore the lucidity of thought which was the most 
marked quality of his mind. 

He was eminently practical; and he was not less but 
more practical for realizing the supreme practical im- 
portance of first principles. According to his first prin- 
ciples Slavery was wrong. It was wrong because it was 
inconsistent with the doctrines enunciated in the Declara- 
tion of Independence in which he firmly believed. Really 



208 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

good thinking like Lincoln's is necessarily outside time, 
and therefore he was not at all affected by the mere use 
and wont which had tended to reconcile so many to 
Slavery. Yet he was far from being a fanatical Aboli- 
tionist. Because Slavery was wrong it did not follow 
that it should be immediately uprooted. But it did fol- 
low that whatever treatment it received should be based 
on the assumption of its wrongness. An excellent illus- 
tration of his attitude of mind will be found in the exact 
point at which he drew the line. For the merely senti- 
mental opponent of Slavery, the Fugitive Slave Law 
made a much more moving appeal to the imagination 
than the extension of Slavery in the territories. Yet 
Lincoln accepted the Fugitive Slave Law. He supported 
it because, as he put it, it was "so nominated in the 
bond." It was part of the terms which the Fathers of 
the Republic, disapproving of Slavery, had yet made 
with Slavery. He also, disapproving of Slavery, could 
honour those terms. But it was otherwise in regard to 
the territorial controversy. Douglas openly treated Sla- 
very not as an evil difficult to cure, but as a thing merely 
indifferent. Southern statesmen were beginning to echo 
Calhoun's definition of it as "a positive good." On the 
top of this came Taney's decision making the right to 
own slaves a fundamental part of the birthright of an 
American citizen. This was much more important than 
the most drastic Fugitive Slave Law, for it indicated a 
change in first principles. 

This is the true meaning of his famous use of the 
text "a house divided against itself cannot stand," and 
his deduction that the Union could not "permanently 
exist half slave and half free." That it had so existed 
for eighty years he admitted, but it had so existed, he 
considered, because the Government had acted on the 



THE SLAVERY QUESTION 209 

first principle that Slavery was an evil to be tolerated 
but curbed, and the public mind had "rested in the be- 
lief that it was in process of ultimate extinction." It 
was now, as it seemed, proposed to abandon that prin- 
ciple and assume it to be good or at least indifferent. 
If that principle were accepted there was nothing to 
prevent the institution being introduced not only into the 
free territories but into the Free States. And indeed the 
reasoning of Taney's judgment, though not the judgment 
itself, really seemed to point to such a conclusion. 

Lincoln soon became the leader of the Illinois Repub- 
licans, and made ready to match himself against Doug- 
las when the "Little Giant" should next seek re-election. 
Meanwhile a new development of the Kansas affair had 
split the Democratic Party and ranged Senator Douglas 
and President Buchanan on opposite sides in an open 
quarrel. The majority of the population now settled in 
Kansas was of Northern origin, for the conditions of 
life in the North were much more favourable to emi- 
gration into new lands than those of the slave-owning 
States. Had a free ballot been taken of the genuine 
settlers there would certainly have been a large major- 
ity against Slavery. But in the scarcely disguised civil 
war into which the competition for Kansas had devel- 
oped, the Slave-State party had the support of bands 
of "border ruffians" from the neighbouring State, who 
could appear as citizens of Kansas one day and return 
to their homes in Missouri the next. With such aid 
that party succeeded in silencing the voices of the Free 
State men while they held a bogus Convention at Le- 
compton, consisting largely of men who were not really 
inhabitants of Kansas at all, adopted a Slave Constitu- 
tion, and under it applied for admission to the Union. 
Buchanan, who, though a Northerner, was strongly 



210 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

biassed in favour of the Slavery party, readily accepted 
this as a bond fide application, and recommended Con- 
gress to accede to it. Douglas was much better informed 
as to how things were actually going in Kansas, and 
he felt that if the Lecompton Constitution were ac- 
knowledged his favourite doctrine of Popular Sov- 
ereignty would be justly covered with odium and con- 
tempt. He therefore set himself against the President, 
and his personal followers combined with the Republi- 
cans to defeat the Lecompton proposition. 

The struggle in Illinois thus became for Douglas a 
struggle for political life or death. At war with the 
President and with a large section of his party, if he 
could not keep a grip on his own State his political 
career was over. Nor did he underrate his Republican 
opponent; indeed, he seems to have had a keener per- 
ception of the great qualities which were hidden under 
Lincoln's rough and awkward exterior than any one else 
at that time exhibited. When he heard of his candida- 
ture he looked grave. "He is the strongest man of his 
party," he said, "and thoroughly honest. It will take 
us all our time to beat him." 

It did. Douglas was victorious, but only narrowly 
and after a hard-fought contest. The most striking fea- 
ture of that contest was the series of Lincoln-Douglas 
debates in which, by an interesting innovation in elec- 
tioneering, the two candidates for the Senatorship con- 
tended face to face in the principal political centres of 
the State. In reading these debates one is impressed not 
only with the ability of both combatants, but with their 
remarkable candour, good temper and even magnanim- 
ity. It is very seldom, if ever, that either displays 
malice or fails in dignity and courtesy to his opponent. 
When one remembers the white heat of political and 



THE SLAVERY QUESTION 211 

sectional rivalry at that time — when one recalls some of 
Sumner's speeches in the Senate, not to mention the 
public beating which they brought on him — it must be 
confessed that the fairness with which the two great 
Illinois champions fought each other was highly to the 
honour of both. 

Where the controversy turned on practical or legal 
matters the combatants were not ill-matched, and both 
scored many telling points. When the general philoso- 
phy of governments came into the question Lincoln's 
great superiority in seriousness and clarity of thought 
was at once apparent. A good example of this will be 
found in their dispute as to the true meaning of the 
Declaration of Independence. Douglas denied that the 
expression "all men" could be meant to include Negroes. 
It only referred to "British subjects in this continent 
being equal to British subjects born and residing in 
Great Britain." Lincoln instantly knocked out his ad- 
versary by reading the amended version of the Declara- 
tion : "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all 
British subjects who were on this Continent eighty-one 
years ago were created equal to all British subjects born 
and then residing in Great Britain." This was more 
than a clever debating point. It was a really crushing 
exposure of intellectual error. The mere use of the 
words "truths" and "self-evident" and their patently ri- 
diculous effect in the Douglas version proves conclusively 
which interpreter was nearest to the mind of Thomas 
Jefferson. And the sense of his superiority is increased 
when, seizing his opportunity, he proceeds to offer a 
commentary on the Declaration in its bearing on the 
Negro Question so incomparably lucid and rational that 
Jefferson himself might have penned it. 

In the following year an incident occurred which is 



212 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

of some historical importance, not because, as is some- 
times vaguely suggested, it did anything whatever to- 
wards the emancipation of the slaves, but because it 
certainly increased, not unnaturally, the anger and alarm 
of the South. Old John Brown had suspended for a 
time his programme of murder and mutilation in Kan- 
sas and returned to New England, where he approached 
a number of wealthy men of known Abolitionist sym- 
pathies whom he persuaded to provide him with money 
for the purpose of raising a slave insurrection. That he 
should have been able to induce men of sanity and 
repute to support him in so frantic and criminal an 
enterprise says much for the personal magnetism which 
by all accounts was characteristic of this extraordinary 
man. Having obtained his supplies he collected a band 
of nineteen men, including his own sons, with which he 
proposed to make an attack on the Government arsenal 
at Harper's Ferry in Virginia, which, when captured, 
he intended to convert into a place of refuge and arma- 
ment for fugitive slaves and a nucleus for the general 
Negro rising which he expected his presence to produce. 
The plan was as mad as its author, yet it is characteristic 
of a peculiar quality of his madness that he conducted the 
actual operations not only with amazing audacity but 
with remarkable skill, and the first part of his programme 
was successfully carried out. The arsenal was surprised, 
and its sleeping and insufficient garrison overpowered. 
"Tere, however, his success ended. No fugitives joined 
him, and there was not the faintest sign of a slave rising. 
In fact, as Lincoln afterwards said, the Negroes, igno- 
rant as they were, seem to have had the sense to see that 
the thing would come to nothing. As soon as Virginia 
woke up to what had happened troops were sent to re- 
capture the arsenal. Brown and his men fought bravely, 



THE SLAVERY QUESTION 213 

but the issue could not be in doubt. Several of Brown's 
followers and all his sons were killed. He himself was 
wounded, captured, brought to trial and very properly- 
hanged — unless we take the view that he should rather 
have been confined in an asylum. He died with the hero- 
ism of a fanatic. Emerson and Longfellow talked some 
amazing nonsense about him which is frequently quoted. 
Lincoln talked some excellent sense which is hardly ever 
quoted. And the Republican party was careful to in- 
sert in its platform a vigorous denunciation of his Har- 
per's Ferry exploit. 

Both sides now began to prepare for the Presidential 
Election of i860. The selection of a Republican candi- 
date was debated at a large and stormy Convention held 
in Chicago. Seward was the most prominent Republican 
politician, but he had enemies, and for many reasons it 
was thought that his adoption would mean the loss of 
available votes. Chase was the favourite of the Radical 
wing of the party, but it was feared that the selection of 
a man who was thought to lean to Abolitionism would 
alienate the moderates. To secure the West was an im- 
portant element in the electoral problem, and this, to- 
gether with the zealous backing of his own State, within 
whose borders the Convention met, and the fact that he 
was recognized as a "Moderate," probably determined 
the choice of Lincoln. It does not appear that any of 
those who chose him knew that they were choosing a 
great man. Some acute observers had doubtless noted 
the ability he displayed in his debates with Douglas, 
but in the main he seems to have been recommended to 
the Chicago Convention, as afterwards to the country, 
mainly on the strength of his humble origin, his skill as 
a rail-splitter, and his alleged ability to bend a poker 
between his fingers. 



214 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

While the Republicans were thus choosing their cham- 
pion, much fiercer quarrels were rending the opposite 
party, whose Convention met at Charleston. The great 
majority of the Northern delegates were for choosing 
Douglas as candidate, and fighting on a programme of 
"popular sovereignty." But the Southerners would not 
hear of either candidate or programme. His attitude on 
the Lecompton business was no longer the only count 
against Douglas. The excellent controversial strategy of 
Lincoln had forced from him during the Illinois debates 
an interpretation of "popular sovereignty" equally of- 
fensive to the South. Lincoln had asked him how a 
territory whose inhabitants desired to exclude Slavery 
could, if the Dred Scott decision were to be accepted, 
lawfully exclude it. Douglas had answered that it could 
for practical purposes exclude it by withholding legisla- 
tion in its support and adopting "unfriendly legislation" 
towards it. Lincoln at once pointed out that Douglas 
was virtually advising a territorial government to nul- 
lify a judgment of the Supreme Court. The cry was 
caught up in the South and was fatal to Douglas's hopes 
of support from that section. 

The Charleston Convention, split into two hostile 
sections, broke up without a decision. The Douglas men, 
who were the majority, met at Baltimore, acclaimed him 
as Democratic candidate and adopted his programme. 
The dissentients held another Convention at Charleston 
and adopted Breckinridge with a programme based upon 
the widest interpretation of the Dred Scott judgment. 
To add to the multiplicity of voices the rump of the old 
Whig Party, calling themselves the party of "the Union, 
the Constitution and the Laws," nominated Everett and 
Bell. 

The split in the Democratic Party helped the Republi- 



THE SLAVERY QUESTION 215 

cans in another than the obvious fashion of giving them 
the chance of slipping in over the heads of divided op- 
ponents. It helped their moral position in the North. 
It deprived the Democrats of their most effective appeal 
to Union-loving men — the assertion that their party was 
national while the Republicans were sectional. For 
Douglas was now practically as sectional as Lincoln. As 
little as Lincoln could he command any considerable sup- 
port south of the Potomac. Moreover, the repudiation 
of Douglas seemed to many Northerners to prove that 
the South was arrogant and unreasonable beyond pos- 
sibility of parley or compromise. The wildest of her 
protagonists could not pretend that Douglas was a 
"Black Abolitionist," or that he meditated any assault 
upon the domestic institutions of the Southern States. 
If the Southerners could not work with him, with what 
Northerner, not utterly and unconditionally subservient 
to them, could they work? It seemed to many that the 
choice lay between a vigorous protest now and the ac- 
ceptance by the numerically superior North of a perma- 
nently inferior position in the Confederation. 

In his last electoral campaign the "Little Giant" put 
up a plucky fight against his enemies North and South. 
But he had met his Waterloo. In the whole Union he 
carried but one State and half of another. The South 
was almost solid for Breckinridge. The North and 
West, from New England to California, was as solid 
for Lincoln. A few border States gave their votes for 
Everett. But, owing to the now overwhelming numeri- 
cal superiority of the Free States, the Republicans had in 
the Electoral College a decided majority over all other 
parties. 

Thus was Abraham Lincoln elected President of the 
United States. But many who voted for him had hardly 



«l(J A HISTORY OF THE UNITED states 

recorded their votes before tli<y became a little afraid 
<>l the thing they had done. Through the whole conti- 
nent ran the ominous whisper: "What will the South 

do?" 

And men held their breath, waiting for what was to 

follow. 



CHAPTER IX 

SECESSION AND CIVIL WAR 

It is a significant fact that the news of Lincoln's election 
which caused so much dismay and searching of heart 
throughout the Southern and Border States was received 
with defiant cheers in Charleston, the chief port of South 
Carolina. Those cheers meant that there was one South- 
ern State that was ready to answer on the instant the 
whispered question which was troubling the North, and 
to answer it by no means in a whisper. 

South Carolina occupied a position not exactly paral- 
i lei to that of any other State. Her peculiarity was not 
i merely that her citizens held the dogma of State Sov- 
ereignty. All the States from Virginia southward, at 
1 any rate, held that dogma in one form or another. But 
South Carolina held it in an extreme form, and habit- 
ually acted on it in an extreme fashion. It is not histori- 
cally true to say that she learnt her political creed from 
Calhoun. It would be truer to say that he learnt it from 
her. But it may be that the leadership of a man of 
genius, who could codify and expound her thought, and 
whose bold intellect shrank from no conclusion to which 
his principles led, helped to give a peculiar simplicity 
and completeness to her interpretation of the dogma in 
question. The peculiarity of her attitude might be ex- 
pressed by saying that most Americans had two loyal- 
ties, while the South Carolinian had only one. Whether 
in the last resort a citizen should prefer loyalty to his 

217 



218 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

State or loyalty to the Union was a question concern- 
ing which man differed from man and State from State. 
There were men, and indeed whole States, for whom 
the conflict was a torturing, personal tragedy, and a tear- 
ing of the heart in two. But practically all Americans 
believed that some measure of loyalty was due to both 
connections. The South Carolinian did not. All his 
loyalty was to his State. He scarcely pretended to any- 
thing like national feeling. The Union was at best a 
useful treaty of alliance with foreigners to be preserved 
only so far as the interests of the Palmetto State were 
advantaged thereby. His representatives in House and 
Senate, the men he sent to take part as electors in the 
choosing of a President, had rather the air of ambassa- 
dors than of legislators. They were in Congress to 
fight the battles of their State, and avowed quite frank- 
ly that if it should ever appear that "the Treaty called 
the Constitution of the United States" (as South Caro- 
lina afterwards designated it in her Declaration of 
Independence) were working to its disadvantage, they 
would denounce it with as little scruple or heart-burn- 
ing as the Washington Government might denounce a 
commercial treaty with England or Spain. 

South Carolina had been talking freely of secession 
for thirty years. As I have said, she regarded the Union 
simply as a diplomatic arrangement to be maintained 
while it was advantageous, and again and again doubts 
had been expressed as to whether in fact it was advan- 
tageous. The fiscal question which had been the osten- 
sible cause of the Nullification movement in the 'thirties 
was still considered a matter of grievance. As an in- 
dependent nation, it was pointed out, South Carolina 
would be free to meet England on the basis of recipro- 
cal Free Trade, to market her cotton in Lancashire to 



SECESSION AND CIVIL WAR 219 

the best advantage, and to receive in return a cheap and 
plentiful supply of British manufactures. At any mo- 
ment since 1832 a good opportunity might have led her 
to attempt to break away. The election of Lincoln was 
to her not so much a grievance as a signal — and not 
altogether an unwelcome one. No time was lost in dis- 
cussion, for the State was unanimous. The legislature 
had been in session choosing Presidential electors — for 
in South Carolina these were chosen by the legislature 
and not by the people. When the results of the voting 
in Pennsylvania and Indiana made it probable that the 
Republicans would have a majority, the Governor inti- 
mated that it should continue to sit in order to consider 
the probable necessity of taking action to save the State. 
The news of Lincoln's election reached Charleston on 
the 7th of November. On November 10 the legislature 
unanimously voted for the holding of a specific Conven- 
tion to consider the relations of South Carolina with 
the United States. The Convention met early in De- 
cember, and before the month was out South Carolina 
had in her own view taken her place in the world as an 
independent nation. The Stars and Stripes were hauled 
down, and the new "Palmetto Flag" — a palm tree and a 
single star — raised over the public buildings throughout 
the State. 

Many Southerners, including not a few who were in- 
clined to Secession as the only course in the face of the 
Republican victory, considered the precipitancy of South 
Carolina unwise and unjustifiable. She should, they 
thought, rather have awaited a conference with the other 
Southern States and the determination of a common 
policy. But in fact there can be little doubt that the 
audacity of her action was a distinct spur to the Seces- 
sionist movement. It gave it a focus, a point round 



220 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

which to rally. The idea of a Southern Confederacy 
was undoubtedly already in the air. But it might have 
remained long and perhaps permanently in the air, if 
no State had been ready at once to take the first definite 
and material step. It was now no longer a mere ab- 
stract conception or inspiration. The nucleus of the 
thing actually existed in the Republic of South Carolina, 
which every believer in State Sovereignty was bound 
to recognize as a present independent State. It acted, 
so to speak, as a magnet to draw other alarmed and dis- 
contented States out of the Union. 

The energy of the South Carolinian Secessionists 
might have produced less effect had anything like a cor- 
responding energy been displayed by the Government of 
the United States. But when men impatiently looked to 
Washington for counsel and decision they found neither. 
The conduct of President Buchanan moved men at the 
•time to contemptuous impatience, and history has echoed 
the contemporary verdict. Just one fact may perhaps 
be urged in extenuation : if he was a weak man he was 
also in a weak position. A real and very practical de- 
fect, as it seems to me, in the Constitution of the United 
States is the four months' interval between the election 
of a President and his installation. The origin of the 
practice is obvious enough : it is a relic of the fiction of 
the Electoral College, which is supposed to be spend- 
ing those months in searching America for the fittest 
man to be chief magistrate. But now that every one 
knows on the morrow of the election of the College who 
is to be President, the effect may easily be to leave the 
immense power and responsibility of the American Ex- 
ecutive during a critical period in the hands of a man 
who has no longer the moral authority of a popular man- 
date — whose policy the people have perhaps just re- 



SECESSION AND CIVIL WAR 221 

jected. So it was in this case. Buchanan was called 
upon to face a crisis produced by the defeat of his own 
party, followed by the threatened rebellion of the men 
to whom he largely owed his election, and with it what 
moral authority he might be supposed to possess. Had 
Lincoln been able to take command in November he 
might, by a combination of firmness and conciliation, 
have checked the Secessionist movement. Buchanan, per- 
haps, could do little; but that little he did not do. 

When all fair allowance has been made for the real 
difficulties of his position it must be owned that the 
President cut a pitiable figure. What was wanted was 
a strong lead for the Union sentiment of all the States 
to rally to. What Buchanan gave was the most self- 
confessedly futile manifesto that any American Presi- 
dent has ever penned. His message to the Congress be- 
gan by lecturing the North for having voted Republican. 
It went on to lecture the people of South Carolina for 
seceding, and to develop in a lawyer-like manner the 
thesis that they had no constitutional right to do so. 
This was not likely to produce much effect in any case, 
but any effect that it might have produced was nulli- 
fied by the conclusion which appeared to be intended to 
show, in the same legal fashion, that, though South 
Carolina had no constitutional right to secede, no one 
had any constitutional right to prevent her from seced- 
ing. The whole wound up with a tearful demonstration 
of the President's own innocence of any responsibility 
for the troubles with which he was surrounded. 

It was not surprising if throughout the nation there 
stirred a name and memory, and to many thousands of 
lips sprang instinctively and simultaneously a single sen- 
tence : "Oh for one hour of Jackson !" 

General Scott, who was in supreme command of the 



Zm A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

armed forces of the Union, had, as a young man, re- 
ceived Jackson's instructions for "the execution of the 
laws" in South Carolina. He sent a detailed specifica- 
tion of them to Buchanan; but it was of no avail. The 
great engine of democratic personal power which Jack- 
son had created and bequeathed to his successors was in 
trembling and incapable hands. With a divided Cabinet 
— for his Secretary of State, Cass, was for vigorous 
action against the rebellious State, while his Secretary 
of War, Floyd, was an almost avowed sympathizer with 
secession — and with a President apparently unable to 
make up his own mind, or to keep to one policy from 
hour to hour, it was clear that South Carolina was not 
to be dealt with in Jackson's fashion. Clay's alterna- 
tive method remained to be tried. 

It was a disciple of Clay's, Senator Crittenden, who 
made the attempt, a Whig and a Kentuckian like his 
master. He proposed a compromise very much in Clay's 
manner, made up for the most part of carefully bal- 
anced concesssions to either section. But its essence lay 
in its proposed settlement of the territorial problem, 
which consisted of a Constitutional Amendment whereby 
territories lying south of latitude 36 30' should be open 
to Slavery, and those north of that line closed against 
it. This was virtually the extension of the Missouri 
Compromise line to the Pacific, save that California, 
already accepted as a Free State, was not affected. Crit- 
tenden, though strenuously supported by Douglas, did 
not meet with Clay's measure of success. The Senate ap- 
pointed a committee to consider the relations of the two 
sections, and to that committee, on which he had a seat, 
he submitted his plan. But its most important clause 
was negatived by a combination of extremes, Davis and 
the other Southerners from the Cotton States combining 



SECESSION AND CIVIL WAR 223 

with the Republicans to reject it. There is, however, 
some reason to believe that the Southerners would have 
accepted the plan if the Republicans had done so. The 
extreme Republicans, whose representative on the com- 
mittee was Wade of Ohio, would certainly have refused 
it in any case, but the moderates on that side might 
probably have accepted and carried it had not Lincoln, 
who had been privately consulted, pronounced decidedly 
against it. This fixes upon Lincoln a considerable re- 
sponsibility before history, for it seems probable that if 
the Crittenden Compromise had been carried the Cotton 
States would not have seceded, and South Carolina would 
have stood alone. The refusal, however, is very char- 
acteristic of his mind. No one, as his whole public con- 
duct showed, was more moderate in counsel and more 
ready to compromise on practical matters than he. Nor 
does it seem that he would have objected strongly to the 
Crittenden plan — though he certainly feared that it 
would lead to filibustering in Mexico and Cuba for the 
purpose of obtaining more slave territory — if it could 
have been carried out by Congressional action alone. 
But the Dred Scott judgment made it necessary to give 
it the form of a Constitutional Amendment, and a Con- 
stitutional Amendment on the lines proposed would do 
what the Fathers of the Republic had so carefully re- 
frained from doing — make Slavery specifically and in 
so many words part of the American system. This was 
a price which his intellectual temper, so elastic in regard 
to details, but so firm in its insistence on sound first 
principles, was not prepared to pay. 

The rejection of the Crittenden Compromise gave the 
signal for the new and much more formidable secession 
which marked the New Year. Before January was spent 
Alabama, Florida, and Mississippi were, in their own 



224 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

view, out of the Union. Louisiana and Texas soon fol- 
lowed their example. In Georgia the Unionists put up 
a much stronger fight, led by Alexander Stephens, af- 
terwards Vice-President of the Confederacy. But even 
there they were defeated, and the Cotton States now 
formed a solid phalanx openly defying the Government 
at Washington. 

The motives of this first considerable secession — for I 
have pointed out that the case of South Carolina was 
unique — are of great importance, for they involve our 
whole view of the character of the war which was to 
follow. In England there is still a pretty general im- 
pression that the States rose in defence of slavery. I 
find a writer so able and generally reliable as Mr. Alex. 
M. Thompson of the Clarion giving, in a recent article, 
as an example of a just war, "the war waged by the 
Northern States to extinguish slavery." This view is, 
of course, patently false. The Northern States waged 
no war to extinguish Slavery; and, had they done so, it 
would not have been a just but a flagrantly unjust war. 
No one could deny for a moment that under the terms 
of Union the Southern States had a right to keep their 
slaves as long as they chose. If any one thought such 
a bargain too immoral to be kept, his proper place was 
with Garrison, and his proper programme the repudia- 
tion of the bargain and the consequent disruption of 
the Union. But the North had clearly no shadow of 
right to coerce the Southerners into remaining in the 
Union and at the same time to deny them the rights 
expressly reserved to them under the Treaty of Union. 
And of such a grossly immoral attempt every fair- 
minded historian must entirely acquit the victorious sec- 
tion. The Northerners did not go to war to abolish 
Slavery. The original basis of the Republican party, 



SECESSION AND CIVIL WAR 225 

its platform of i860, the resolutions passed by Congress, 
and the explicit declarations of Lincoln, both before and 
after election, all recognize specifically and without re- 
serve the immunity of Slavery in the Slave States from 
all interference by the Federal Government. 

American writers are, of course, well acquainted with 
such elementary facts, and, if they would attempt to 
make Slavery the cause of the rebellion, they are com- 
pelled to use a different but, I think, equally misleading 
phrase. I find, for instance, Professor Rhodes saying 
that the South went to war for "the extension of Sla- 
very." This sounds more plausible, because the exten- 
sion of the geographical area over which Slavery should 
be lawful had been a Southern policy, and because the 
victory of the party organized to oppose this policy was 
in fact the signal for secession. But neither will this 
statement bear examination, for it must surely be ob- 
vious that the act of secession put a final end to any 
hope of the extension of Slavery. How could Georgia 
and Alabama, outside the Union, effect anything to 
legalize Slavery in the Union territories of Kansas and 
New Mexico? 

A true statement of the case would, I think, be this. 
The South felt itself threatened with a certain peril. 
Against that peril the extension of the slave area had 
been one attempted method of protection. Secession was 
an alternative method. 

The peril was to be found in the increasing numerical 
superiority of the North, which must, it was feared, 
reduce the South to a position of impotence in the Union 
if once the rival section were politically united. Lowell 
spoke much of the truth when he said that the Southern 
grievance was the census of i860; but not the whole 
truth. It was the census of i860 plus the Presidential 



226 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

Election of i860, and the moral to be drawn from the 
two combined. The census showed that the North was 
already greatly superior in numbers, and that the dis- 
proportion was an increasing one. The election showed 
the North combined in support of a party necessarily 
and almost avowedly sectional, and returning its candi- 
date triumphantly, although he had hardly a vote south 
of the Mason-Dixon line. To the South this seemed to 
mean that in future, if it was to remain in the Union at 
all, it must be on sufferance. A Northerner would al- 
ways be President, a Northern majority would always 
be supreme in both Houses of Congress, for the admis- 
sion of California, already accomplished, and the now 
certain admission of Kansas as a Free State had dis- 
turbed the balance in the Senate as well as in the House. 
The South would henceforward be unable to influence in 
any way the policy of the Federal Government. It 
would be enslaved. 

It is true that the South had no immediate grievance. 
The only action of the North of which she had any sort 
of right to complain was the infringement of the spirit 
of the Constitutional compact by the Personal Liberty 
Laws. But these laws there was now a decided dispo- 
sition to amend or repeal — a disposition strongly sup- 
ported by the man whom the North had elected as Presi- 
dent. It is also true that this man would never have 
lent himself to any unfair depression of the Southern 
part of the Union. This last fact, however, the South 
may be pardoned for not knowing. Even those North- 
erners who had elected Lincoln knew little about him 
except that he was the Republican nominee and had been 
a "rail-splitter." In the South, so far as one can judge, 
all that was heard about him was that he was a "Black 
Abolitionist," which was false, and that in appearance 



SECESSION AND CIVIL WAR 227 

he resembled a gorilla, which was, at least by compari- 
son, true. 

But, even if Lincoln's fairness of mind and his con- 
ciliatory disposition towards the South had been fully 
appreciated, it is not clear that the logic of the Secession- 
ist case would have been greatly weakened. The essen- 
tial point was that the North by virtue of its numerical 
superiority had elected a purely northern candidate on 
a purely northern programme. Though both candidate 
and programme were in fact moderate, there was no 
longer any security save the will of the North that such 
moderation would continue. If the conditions remained 
unaltered, there was nothing to prevent the North at a 
subsequent election from making Charles Sumner Presi- 
dent with a programme conceived in the spirit of John 
Brown's raid. It must be admitted that the policy adopt- 
ed by the dominant North after the Civil War might well 
appear to afford a measure of posthumous justification 
for these fears. 

In the North at first all seemed panic and confusion 
of voices. To many — and among them were some of 
those who had been keenest in prosecuting the sectional 
quarrel of which Secession was the outcome — it ap- 
peared the wisest course to accept the situation and ac- 
quiesce in the peaceable withdrawal of the seceding 
States. This was the position adopted almost unani- 
mously by the Abolitionists, and it must be owned that 
they at least were strictly consistent in taking it. "When 
I called the Union 'a League with Death and an Agree- 
ment with Hell,' " said Garrison, "I did not expect to see 
Death and Hell secede from the Union." Garrison's dis- 
ciple, Wendell Phillips, pronounced the matter one for 
the Gulf States themselves to decide, and declared that 
you could not raise troops in Boston to coerce South 



228 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

Carolina or Florida. The same line was taken by men 
who carried greater weight than did the Abolitionists. 
No writer had rendered more vigorous service to the 
Republican cause in i860 than Horace Greeley of the 
New York Tribune. His pronouncement in that jour- 
nal on the Southern secessions was embodied in the 
phrase : "Let our erring sisters go." 

But while some of the strongest opponents of the 
South and of Slavery were disposed to accept the dis- 
memberment of the Union almost complacently, there 
were men of a very different type to whom it seemed an 
outrage to be consummated only over their dead bodies. 
During the wretched months of Buchanan's incurable 
hesitancy the name of Jackson had been in every mouth. 
And at the mere sound of that name there was a rally 
to the Union of all who had served under the old war- 
rior in the days when he had laid his hands of steel 
upon the Nullifiers. Some of them, moved by that 
sound and by the memory of the dead, broke through 
the political ties of a quarter of a century. Among those 
in whom that memory overrode every other passion 
were Holt, a Southerner and of late the close ally of 
Davis; Cass, whom Lowell had pilloried as the typical 
weak-kneed Northerner who suffered himself to be made 
the lackey of the South ; and Taney, who had denied that, 
in the contemplation of the American Constitution, the 
Negro was a man. It was Black, an old Jacksonian, who 
in the moment of peril held the nerveless hands of the 
President firm to the tiller. It was Dix, another such, 
who sent to New Orleans the very Jacksonian order: 
"If any man attempts to haul down the American flag, 
shoot him at sight." 

War is always the result of a conflict of wills. 

The conflict of wills which produced the American 



SECESSION AND CIVIL WAR 229 

Civil War had nothing directly to do with Slavery. It 
was the conflict between the will of certain Southern 
States to secede rather than accept the position of a 
permanent minority and the will expressed in Jackson's 
celebrated toast : "Our Union, it must be preserved." 
It is the Unionist position which clearly stands in need 
of special defence, since it proposed the coercion of a 
recalcitrant population. Can such a defence be framed 
in view of the acceptance by most of us of the general 
principle which has of late been called "the self-determi- 
nation of peoples?" 

I think it can. One may at once dismiss the common 
illusion — for it is often in such cases a genuine illusion, 
though sometimes a piece of hypocrisy — which undoubt- 
edly had possession of many Northern minds at the time, 
that the Southern people did not really want to secede, 
but were in some mysterious fashion "intimidated" by 
a disloyal minority. How, in the absence of any spe- 
cial means of coercion, one man can "intimidate" two 
was never explained any more than it is explained when 
the same absurd hypothesis is brought forward in rela- 
tion to Irish agrarian and English labour troubles. At 
any rate in this case there is not, and never has been, 
the slightest justification for doubting that Secessionism 
was from the first a genuine popular movement, that it 
was enthusiastically embraced by hundreds of thou- 
sands who no more expected ever to own a slave than 
an English labourer expects to own a carriage and pair; 
that in this matter the political leaders of the State, and 
Davis in particular, rather lagged behind than outran 
the general movement of opinion; that the Secessionists 
were in the Cotton States a great majority from the 
first; that they became later as decided a majority in 
Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee; and that by 



230 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

the time the sword was drawn there was behind the Con- 
federate Government a unanimity very rare in the history 
of revolutions — certainly much greater than existed in 
the colonies at the time of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence. To oppose so formidable a mass of local opin- 
ion and to enforce opposition by the sword was for a 
democracy a grave responsibility. 

Yet it was a responsibility which had to be accepted 
if America was to justify her claim to be a nation. To 
understand this certain further propositions must be 
grasped. 

First, the resistance of the South, though so nearly 
universal, was not strictly national. You cannot com- 
pare the case with that of Ireland or Poland. The Con- 
federacy was never a nation, though, had the war had 
a different conclusion, it might perhaps have become one. 
It is important to remember that the extreme Southern 
view did not profess to regard the South as a nationality. 
It professed to regard South Carolina as one nationality, 
Florida as another, Virginia as another. But this view, 
though it had a strong hold on very noble minds, was 
at bottom a legalism out of touch with reality. It may 
be doubted whether any man felt it in his bones as men 
feel a genuine national sentiment. 

On the other hand American national sentiment was 
a reality. It had been baptized in blood. It was a re- 
ality for Southerners as well as for Northerners, for 
Secessionists as well as for Union men. There was 
probably no American, outside South Carolina, who did 
not feel it as a reality, though it might be temporarily 
obscured and overborne by local loyalties, angers, and 
fears. The President of the Confederacy had himself 
fought under the Stars and Stripes, and loved it so well 
that he could not bear to part with it and wished to re- 



SECESSION AND CIVIL WAR 231 

tain it as the flag of the South. Had one generation of 
excited men, without any cognate and definable griev- 
ance, moved only by anger at a political reverse and the 
dread of unrealized and dubious evils, the right to undo 
the mighty work of consolidation now so nearly accom- 
plished, to throw away at once the inheritance of their 
fathers and the birthright of their children ? Nor would 
they and their children be the only losers : it was the 
great principles on which the American Commonwealth 
was built that seemed to many to be on trial for their 
life. If the Union were broken up, what could men say 
but that Democracy had failed? The ghost of Hamil- 
ton might grin from his grave ; though his rival had won 
the laurel, it was he who would seem to have proved his 
case. For the first successful secession would not nec- 
essarily have been the last. The thesis of State Sov- 
ereignty established by victory in arms — which always 
does in practice establish any thesis for good or evil 
— meant the break-up of the free and proud American 
nation into smaller and smaller fragments as new dis- 
putes arose, until the whole fabric planned by the 
Fathers of the Republic had disappeared. It is impos- 
sible to put this argument better than in the words of 
Lincoln himself. "Must a government, of necessity, be 
too strong for the liberties of its own people, or too 
weak to maintain its own existence?" That was the 
issue as he saw it, an issue which he was determined 
should be decided in the negative, even at the cost of a 
long and bloody Civil War. 

I have endeavoured to state fairly the nature of the 
conflict of wills which was to produce Civil War, and to 
explain how each side justified morally its appeal to 
arms. Further than that I do not think it necessary to 
go. But I will add just this one historical fact which, I 



232 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

think, supplies some degree of further justification for 
the attitude of the North — that concerning this matter 
of the Union, which was the real question in debate, 
though not in regard to other subsidiary matters which 
will demand our attention in the next chapter, the South 
was ultimately not only conquered but persuaded. There 
are among the millions of Southerners alive to-day few 
who will admit that their fathers fought in an unjust 
cause, but there are probably still fewer, if any at all, 
who would still wish to secede if they had the power. 
Jefferson Davis himself could, at the last, close his rec- 
ord of his own defeat and of the triumph of the Union 
with the words, "Esto Perpetua." 

Lincoln took the oath as President on March 4, 1861. 
His Inaugural Address breathes the essential spirit of 
his policy — firmness in things fundamental, conciliation 
in things dispensable. He reiterated his declaration that 
he had neither right nor inclination to interfere with 
Slavery in the Slave States. He quoted the plank in 
the Republican platform which affirmed the right of each 
State to control its own affairs, and vigorously con- 
demned John Brown's insane escapade. He declared for 
an effective Fugitive Slave Law, and pledged himself to 
its faithful execution. He expressed his approval of the 
amendment to the Constitution which Congress had just 
resolved to recommend, forbidding the Federal Govern- 
ment ever to interfere with the domestic institutions of 
the several States, "including that of persons held to 
service." But on the question of Secession he took firm 
ground. "I hold that, in contemplation of universal law 
and of the Constitution, the union of these States is 
perpetual. ... It follows from these views that no State 
upon its own mere motion can lawfully get out of the 
Union; that resolves and ordinances to that effect are 



SECESSION AND CIVIL WAR 233 

legally void; and that acts of violence within any State 
or States, against the authority of the United States, 
are insurrectionary or revolutionary, according to the cir- 
cumstances." He accepted the obligation which the Con- 
stitution expressly enjoined on him, to see "that the laws 
of the Union be faithfully executed in all the States." 
He would use his power "to hold, occupy, and possess the 
property and places belonging to the Government and 
to collect the duties and imposts," but beyond that there 
would be no interference or coercion. There could be 
no conflict or bloodshed unless the Secessionists were 
themselves the aggressors. "In your hands, my dissatis- 
fied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine is the momen- 
tous issue of Civil War. . . . You have no oath regis- 
tered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I have 
the most solemn one 'to preserve, protect and defend it.' " 

He ended with the one piece of rhetoric in the whole 
address — rhetoric deliberately framed to stir those emo- 
tions of loyalty to the national past and future which 
he knew to endure, howsoever overshadowed by anger 
and misunderstanding, even in Southern breasts. "We 
are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. 
Though passion may have strained it must not break 
our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, 
stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to 
every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad 
land, will yet swell the chorus of Union, when again 
touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of 
our nature." 

But there was not much evidence of the active opera- 
tion of such "better angels" at the moment. Half the 
Southern States had not only seceded, but had already 
formed themselves into a hostile Confederacy. They 
framed a Constitution modelled in essentials on that of 



234 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

the United States, but with the important difference that 
"We the deputies of the Sovereign and Independent 
States" was substituted for "We the people of the United 
States," and with certain minor amendments, some of 
which were generally thought even in the North to be 
improvements. 

They elected Jefferson Davis as President, and as 
Vice-President Alexander Stephens of Georgia, who 
had been a Unionist, but had accepted the contrary ver- 
dict of his State. 

The choice was, perhaps, as good as could have been 
made. Davis was in some ways well fitted to represent 
the new Commonwealth before the world. He had a 
strong sense of what befitted his own dignity and that 
of his office. He had a keen eye for what would at- 
tract the respect and sympathy of foreign nations. It 
is notable, for instance, that in his inaugural address, 
in setting forth the grounds on which Secession was to be 
justified, he made no allusion to the institution of Slav- 
ery. There he may be contrasted favourably with 
Stephens, whose unfortunate speech declaring Slavery 
to be the stone which the builders of the old Constitu- 
tion rejected, and which was to become the cornerstone 
of the new Confederacy, was naturally seized upon by 
Northern sympathizers at the time, and has been as con- 
tinually brought forward since by historians and writ- 
ers who wish to emphasize the connection between Slav- 
ery and the Southern cause. Davis had other qualifi- 
cations which might seem to render him eminently fit 
to direct the policy of a Confederation which must necc 
essarily begin its existence by fighting and winning a 
great and hazardous war. He had been a soldier and 
served with distinction. Later he had been, by common 
consent, one of the best War Secretaries that the United 



SECESSION AND CIVIL WAR 235 

States had possessed. It was under his administration 
that both Lee and McClellan, later to be arrayed 
against each other, were sent to the Crimea to study mod- 
ern war at first hand. 

But Davis had faults of temper which often endan- 
gered and perhaps at last ruined the cause he served. 
They can be best appreciated by reading his own book. 
There is throughout a note of querulousness which weak- 
ens one's sympathy for the hero of a lost cause. He is 
always explaining how things ought to have happened, 
how the people of Kentucky ought to have been angry 
with Lincoln instead of siding with him, and so on. 
One understands at once how he was bested in demo- 
cratic diplomacy by his rival's lucid realism and unfail- 
ing instinct for dealing with men as men. One under- 
stands also his continual quarrels with his generals, 
though in that department he was from the first much 
better served than was the Government at Washington. 
A sort of nervous irritability, perhaps a part of what 
is called "the artistic temperament," is everywhere per- 
ceptible. Nowhere does one find a touch of that spirit 
which made Lincoln say, after an almost insolent re- 
buff to his personal and official dignity from McClellan : 
"Well, I will hold his horse for him if he will give us a 
victory." 

The prize for which both parties were contending in 
the period of diplomatic skirmishing which marks the 
opening months of Lincoln's administration was the ad- 
herence of those Slave States which had not yet seceded. 
So far disruptional doctrines had triumphed only in the 
Cotton States. In Virginia Secession had been rejected 
by a very decided majority, and the rejection had been 
confirmed by the result of the subsequent elections for 
the State legislature. The Secessionists had also seen 



236 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

their programme defeated in Tennessee, Arkansas, and 
North Carolina, while Kentucky, Missouri and Mary- 
land had as yet refused to make any motion towards it. 
In Texas the general feeling was on the whole Secession- 
ist, but the Governor was a Unionist, and succeeded for 
a time in preventing definite action. To keep these 
States loyal, while keeping at the same time his pledge 
to "execute the laws," was Lincoln's principal problem 
in the first days of his Presidency. 

The policy turned mainly on two principles. Firstly, 
the South must see that the administration of the laws 
was really impartial, and that the President executed 
them because he had taken an oath to do so ; not because 
the North wanted to trample on the South. This con- 
sideration explains the extreme rigour with which he en- 
forced the Fugitive Slave Law. Here was a law involv- 
ing a Constitutional obligation, which he, with his known 
views on Slavery, could not possibly like executing, 
which the North certainly did not want him to execute, 
which he could be executing only from a sense of obliga- 
tion under the Constitution. Such an example would 
make it easier for moderate Southern opinion to accept 
the application of a similar strictness to the seceding 
States. 

The second principle was the strict confinement of his 
intervention within the limits presented by his Inaugural 
Address. This was calculated tc bear a double effect. 
On the one hand, it avoided an immediate practical chal- 
lenge to the doctrine of State Sovereignty, strongly held 
by many in the Middle States, who were nevertheless 
opposed to Secession. On the other, it tended, if pro- 
longed, Co render the Southern assumption of the role of 
"a people risen against tyrants" a trifle ridiculous. A free- 
man defying the edicts of the oppressor is a dignified spec- 



SECESSION AND CIVIL WAR 237 

tacle: not so that of a man desperately anxious to defy 
edicts which the oppressor obstinately refuses to issue. 
It was possible for Lincoln to put the rebels in this posi- 
tion because under the American Constitution nine-tenths 
of the laws which practically affected the citizen were 
State and not Federal laws. When people began to talk 
of protesting against tyranny by refusing to allow the 
tyrant to deliver their mails to them, it was obvious how 
near the comic the sublime defiance of the Confederates 
was treading. There were men in the South who fully 
realized the disconcerting effect of the President's moder- 
ation. "Unless you baptize the Confederacy in blood," 
said a leading Secessionist of Alabama to Jefferson 
Davis, "Alabama will be back in the Union within a 
month." 

Unfortunately Lincoln's attitude of masterly inactiv- 
ity could not be kept up for long, for a problem, be- 
queathed him by his predecessor, pressed upon him, de- 
manding action, just where action might, as he well 
knew, mean a match dropped in the heart of a powder- 
magazine. On an island in the very harbour of Charles- 
ton itself stood Fort Sumter, an arsenal held by the 
Federal Government. South Carolina, regarding her- 
self as now an independent State, had sent an embassy 
to Washington to negotiate among other things for its 
surrender and transfer to the State authorities. Bu- 
chanan had met these emissaries and temporized without 
definitely committing himself. He had been on the point 
of ordering Major Anderson, who was in command of 
the garrison, to evacuate the fort, when under pressure 
from Black, his Secretary of State, he changed his mind 
and sent a United States packet, called Star of the West, 
with reinforcements for Anderson. The State authori- 
ties at Charleston fired on the ship, which, being un- 



238 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

armed, turned tail and returned to Washington without 
fulfilling its mission. The problem was now passed on 
to Lincoln, with this aggravation, that Anderson's troops 
had almost consumed their stores, could get no more 
from Charleston, and, if not supplied, must soon suc- 
cumb to starvation. Lincoln determined to avoid the 
provocation of sending soldiers and arms, but to despatch 
a ship with food and other necessaries for the garrison. 
This resolution was duly notified to the authorities at 
Charleston. 

Their anger was intense. They had counted on the 
evacuation of the fort, and seem to have considered that 
they held a pledge from Seward, who was now Secretary 
of State, and whose conduct in the matter seems certainly 
to have been somewhat devious, to that effect. The 
Stars and Stripes waving in their own harbour in de- 
fiance of their Edict of Secession seemed to them and to 
all their people a daily affront. Now that the President 
had intimated in the clearest possible fashion that he 
intended it to be permanent, they and all the inhabitants 
of Charleston, and indeed of South Carolina, clamoured 
loudly for the reduction of the fortress. In an evil hour 
Jefferson Davis, though warned by his ablest advisers 
that he was putting his side in the wrong, yielded to their 
pressure. Anderson was offered the choice between im- 
mediate surrender or the forcible reduction of the 
fortress. True to his military duty, though his own 
sympathies were largely Southern, he refused to sur- 
render, and the guns of three other forts, which the 
Confederates had occupied, began the bombardment of 
Sumter. 

It lasted all day, the little fortress replying with great 
spirit, though with insufficient and continually diminish- 
ing means. It is an astonishing fact that in this, the 



SECESSION AND CIVIL WAR 239 

first engagement of the Civil War, though much of the 
fort was wrecked, no life was lost on either side. At 
length Anderson's ammunition was exhausted, and he 
surrendered at discretion. The Stars and Stripes were 
pulled down and the new flag of the Confederacy, called 
the Stars and Bars, waved in its place. 

The effect of the news in the North was electric. 
Never before and never after was it so united. One cry 
of anger went up from twenty million throats. Whit- 
man, in the best of his "Drum Taps," has described the 
spirit in which New York received the tidings; how that 
great metropolitan city, which had in the past been Dem- 
ocrat in its votes and half Southern in its political con- 
nections — "at dead of night, at news from the South, 
incensed, struck with clenched fist the pavement." 

It is important to the true comprehension of the motive 
power behind the war to remember what this "news from 
the South" was. It was not the news of the death of 
Uncle Tom or of the hanging of John Brown. It had 
not the remotest connection with Slavery. It was an in- 
sult offered to the flag. In the view of every Northern 
man and woman there was but one appropriate answer — 
the sentence which Bavare had passed upon the city of 
Lyons : "South Carolina has fired upon Old Glory : South 
Carolina is no more." 

Lincoln, feeling the tide of the popular will below him 
as a good boatman feels a strong and deep current, issued 
an appeal for 75,000 militia from the still loyal States 
to defend the flag and the Union which it symbolized. 
The North responded with unbounded enthusiasm, and 
the number of volunteers easily exceeded that for which 
the President had asked and Congress provided. In the 
North-West Lincoln found a powerful ally in his old 
antagonist Stephen Douglas. In the dark and perplex- 



240 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

ing months which intervened between the Presidential 
Election and the outbreak of the Civil War, no public 
man had shown so pure and selfless a patriotism. Even 
during the election, when Southern votes were important 
to him and when the threat that the election of the Re- 
publican nominee would lead to Secession was almost 
the strongest card in his hand, he had gone out of his 
way to declare that no possible choice of a President 
could justify the dismemberment of the Republic. 
When Lincoln was elected, he had spoken in several 
Southern States urging acquiescence in the verdict and 
loyalty to the Union. He had taken care to be present 
on the platform at his rival's inauguration, and, after 
the affair of Sumter, the two had had a long and confi- 
dential conversation. Returning to his native West, he 
commenced the last of his campaigns — a campaign for 
no personal object but for the raising of soldiers to keep 
the old flag afloat. In that campaign the "Little Giant" 
spent the last of his unquenchable vitality; and in the 
midst of it he died. 

For the North and West the firing on the Stars and 
Stripes was the decisive issue. For Virginia and to a 
great extent for the other Southern States which had not 
yet seceded it was rather the President's demands for 
State troops to coerce a sister State. The doctrine of 
State Sovereignty was in these States generally held to 
be a fundamental principle of the Constitution and the 
essential condition of their liberties. They had no de- 
sire to leave the Union so long as it were understood that 
it was a union of sovereign States. But the proposal to 
use force against a recalcitrant State seemed to them to 
upset the whole nature of the compact and reduce them 
to a position of vassalage. This attitude explains the 
second Secession which took Virginia, Tennessee, North 



SECESSION AND CIVIL WAR 241 

Carolina, and Arkansas out of the Union. It explains 
also why the moment the sword was drawn the opinion 
of these States, strongly divided up to that very moment, 
became very nearly unanimous. Not all their citizens, 
even after the virtual declaration of war against South 
Carolina, wanted their State to secede, but all, or nearly 
all, claimed that they had the right to secede if they 
wanted to, and therefore all, or nearly all, accepted the 
decision of their States even if it were contrary to their 
own judgment and preference. 

It is important to understand this attitude, not only 
because it was very general, but because it was the atti- 
tude of one of the noblest sons the Republic ever bore, 
who yet felt compelled, regretfully but with full certi- 
tude that he did right, to draw the sword against her. 

Robert Lee was already recognized as one of the most 
capable captains in the service of the United States. 
When it became obvious that General Scott, also a Vir- 
ginian, but a strong Unionist, was too old to undertake 
the personal direction of the approaching campaign, Lee 
was sounded as to his readiness to take his place. He 
refused, not desiring to take part in the coercion of a 
State, and subsequently, when his own State became in- 
volved in the quarrel, resigned his commission. Later 
he accepted the chief command of the Virginian forces 
and became the most formidable of the rebel com- 
manders. Yet with the institution, zeal for which is 
still so largely thought to have been the real motive of 
the South, he had no sympathy. Four years before the 
Republican triumph, he had, in his correspondence, de- 
clared Slavery to be "a moral and political evil." Nor 
was he a Secessionist. He deeply regretted and so 1 far 
as he could, without meddling in politics, to which, in 
the fashion of good soldiers, he was strongly averse, op- 



242 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

posed the action which his State eventually took. But 
he thought that she had the right to take it if she 
chose, and, the fatal choice having been made, he had 
no option in his own view but to throw in his lot with 
her and accept his portion of whatever fate might be in 
store for her armies and her people. 

Virginia now passed an Ordinance of Secession, and 
formed a military alliance with the Southern Confed- 
eracy. Later she was admitted to membership of that 
Confederacy, and the importance attached to her acces- 
sion may be judged by the fact that the new Government 
at once transferred its seat to her capital, the city of 
Richmond. The example of Virginia was followed by 
the other Southern States already enumerated. 

There remained four Southern States in which the 
issue was undecided. One of them, Delaware, caused no 
appreciable anxiety. She was the smallest State in the 
Union in population, almost the smallest in area, and 
though technically a Slave State, the proportion of 
negroes within her borders was small. It was otherwise 
with the three formidable States which still hung in the 
balance, Missouri, Kentucky, and Maryland. That these 
were saved to the Union was due almost wholly to the 
far-sighted prudence and consummate diplomacy of 
Abraham Lincoln. 

Missouri was the easiest to hold. Geographically she 
was not really a Southern State at all, and, though she 
was a Slave State by virtue of Clay's Compromise, the 
institution had not there struck such deep roots as in 
the true South. The mass of her people were recruited 
from all the older States, North and South, with a 
considerable contingent fresh from Europe. Union 
feeling was strong among them and State feeling com- 
paratively weak. Her Governor, indeed, was an ardent 



SECESSION AND CIVIL WAR 243 

Southern sympathizer and returned a haughty and de- 
fiant reply to Lincoln's request for soldiers. But Francis 
Blair, a prominent and popular citizen, and Captain 
Lyon, who had raised and commanded a Union force 
within her borders, between them carried the State 
against him. He was deposed, a Unionist Governor sub- 
stituted, and Missouri ranged herself definitely with the 
North. 

The case of Maryland was much more critical, for it 
appeared to involve the fate of the Capital. Washington 
lay between Maryland and Virginia, and if Maryland 
joined Virginia in rebellion it could hardly be held. Yet 
its abandonment might entail the most serious political 
consequences, certainly an enormous encouragement to 
the seceding Confederacy, quite probably its immediate 
recognition by foreign Powers. At first the omens 
looked ugly. The populace of Baltimore, the capital of 
the State, were at this time pronouncedly Southern in 
their sentiments, and the first Massachusetts regiment 
sent to the relief of Washington was hustled and stoned 
in its streets. The soldiers fired on the mob and there 
were casualties on both sides. Immediately afterwards 
the legislature of Maryland protested against the viola- 
tion of its territory. Lincoln acted with admirable sense 
and caution. He pointed out that the Federal armies 
could not fly, and that therefore to reach Washington 
they must pass over the soil of Maryland; but he made 
no point of their going through Baltimore, and he wisely 
provided that further contingents should, for a time, pro- 
ceed by water to Annapolis. Meanwhile he strained 
every nerve to reassure and conciliate Maryland with 
complete success. Within a month or two Federal troops 
could be brought to Baltimore without the smallest fric- 
tion or disturbance. Later the loyalty of Maryland was, 



244 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

as we shall see, put to a much more critical test and 
passed it triumphantly. 

The President naturally felt a special interest in the 
attitude of his native state, Kentucky. That attitude 
would have perplexed and embarrassed a less discerning 
statesman. Taking her stand on the dogma of State 
Sovereignty Kentucky declared herself "neutral" in the 
impending war between the United and Confederate 
States, and forbade the troops of either party to cross 
her territory. Lincoln could not of course recognize the 
validity of such a declaration, but he was careful to avoid 
any act in open violation of it. Sometimes openly and 
sometimes secretly he worked hard to foster, consolidate, 
and encourage the Union party in Kentucky. With his 
approval and probably at his suggestion loyalist levies 
were voluntarily recruited on her soil, drilled and pre- 
pared for action. But no northern troops were sent 
across her frontier. He was undoubtedly working for 
a violation of Kentuckian "neutrality" by the other side. 
Circumstances and geographical conditions helped him. 
The frontier between Kentucky and Tennessee was a 
mere degree of latitude corresponding to no militarily 
defensible line, nor did any such line exist to the south 
of it capable of covering the capital of Tennessee. On the 
other hand an excellent possible line of defence existed 
in Southern Kentucky. The Confederate commanders 
were eager to seize it, but the neutrality of Kentucky 
forbade them. When, however, they saw the hold which 
Lincoln seemed to be acquiring over the counsels of the 
"neutrals," they felt they dared not risk further delay. 
Justifying their act by the presence in Kentucky of 
armed bodies of local Unionists, they advanced and oc- 
cupied the critical points of Columbus and Bowling 
Green, stretching their line between them on Kentuckian 



SECESSION AND CIVIL WAR 245 

soil. The act at once determined the course of the hesi- 
tating State. Torn hitherto between loyalty to the 
Union and loyalty to State rights, she now found the 
two sentiments synchronize. In the name of her violated 
neutrality she declared war on the Confederacy and took 
her place under the Stars and Stripes. 

The line between the two warring confederations of 
States was now definitely fixed, and it only remained to 
try the issue between them by the arbitrament of the 
sword. 

At first the odds might seem very heavy against the 
Confederacy, for its total white population was only 
about five and a half million, while the states arrayed 
against it mustered well over twenty million. But there 
were certain considerations which tended to some ex- 
tent to equalize the contest. 

First there is the point which must always be taken 
into consideration when estimating the chances of war — 
the political objective aimed at. The objective of the 
North was the conquest of the South. But the objec- 
tive of the South was not the conquest of the North. 
It was the demonstration that such conquest as the 
North desired was impracticable, or at least so expensive 
as not to be worth pursuing. That the Union, if the 
States that composed it remained united and determined 
and no other factor were introduced, could eventually 
defeat the Confederacy was from the first almost mathe- 
matically certain; and between complete defeat and con- 
quest there is no such distinction as some have imagined, 
for a military force which has destroyed all military 
forces opposed to it can always impose its will uncondi- 
tionally on the conquered. But that these States would 
remain united and determined was not certain at all. 
If the South put up a sufficiently energetic fight, there 



246 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

might arise in the dominant section a considerable body 
of opinion which felt that too high a price was being 
paid for the enterprise. Moreover, there was always 
the possibility and often the probability of another fac- 
tor — the intervention of some foreign Power in favour 
of the South, as France had intervened in favour of the 
Americans in 1781. Such were the not unlikely chances 
on which the South was gambling. 

Another factor in favour of the South was prepara- 
tion. South Carolina had begun raising and drilling 
soldiers for a probable war as soon as Lincoln was 
elected. The other Southern States had at various in- 
tervals followed her example. On the Northern side 
there had been no preparation whatever under the 
Buchanan regime, and Lincoln had not much chance of 
attempting such preparation before the war was upon 
him. 

Further, it was probably true that, even untrained, the 
mass of Southerners were better fitted for war than the 
mass of Northerners. They were, as a community, 
agrarian, accustomed to an open-air life, proud of their 
skill in riding and shooting. The first levies of the 
North were drawn mostly from the urban population, 
and consisted largely of clerks, artisans, and men of the 
professional class, in whose previous modes of life there 
was nothing calculated to prepare them in any way for 
the duties of a soldier. To this general rule there was, 
however, an important reservation, of which the fighting 
at Fort Donelson and Shiloh afforded an early illustra- 
tion. In dash and hardihood, and what may be called 
the raw materials of soldiership the South, whatever it 
may have had to teach the North, had little to teach the 
West. 

In the matter of armament the South, though not ex- 



SECESSION AND CIVIL WAR 247 

actly advantageously placed, was at the beginning not 
so badly off as it might well have been. Floyd, at one 
time Buchanan's Secretary for War, was accused, and 
indeed, after he had joined the Secessionists, virtually 
admitted having deliberately distributed the arms of the 
Federal Government to the advantage of the Confed- 
eracy. Certainly the outbreak of war found some well- 
stocked arsenals within the grasp of the rebellion. It 
was not until its later phases that the great advantage 
of the industrial North in facilities for the manufacture 
of armaments made itself apparent. 

But the great advantage which the South possessed, 
and which accounts for the great measure of military 
success which it enjoyed, must be regarded as an acci- 
dental one. It consisted in the much greater capacity of 
the commanders whom the opening of the war found in 
command of its forces. The North had to search for 
competent generals by a process of trial and error, 
almost every trial being marked by a disaster; nor till 
the very end of the war did she discover the two or three 
men who were equal to their job. The South, on the 
other hand, had from the beginning the good luck to 
possess in its higher command more than one captain 
whose talents were on the highest possible level. 

The Confederate Congress was summoned to meet at 
Richmond on July 20th. A cry went up from the 
North that this event should be prevented by the capture 
before that date of the Confederate capital. The cry 
was based on an insufficient appreciation of the military 
resources of the enemy, but it was so vehement and uni- 
versal that the Government was compelled to yield to it. 
A considerable army had by this time been collected in 
Washington, and under the command of General Mc- 
Dowell it now advanced into Virginia, its immediate ob- 



248 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

jective being Manassas Junction. The opposing force 
was under the Southern Commander Beauregard, a 
Louisianian of French extraction. In the other gate of 
Eastern Virginia, the Shenandoah Valley was held by 
Joseph E. Johnston, who was to be kept engaged by 
an aged Union general named Patterson. Johnston, 
however, broke contact and got away from Patterson, 
joining Beauregard behind the line of a small river 
called Bull Run, to which the latter had retired. Here 
McDowell attacked, and the first real battle of the Civil 
War followed. For a time it wavered between the two 
sides, but the arrival in flank of the forces of Johnston's 
rearguard, which had arrived too late for the opening 
of the battle, threw the Union right wing into confusion. 
Panic spread to the whole army, which, with the excep- 
tion of a small body of regular troops, flung away its 
arms and fled in panic back to Washington. 

Thus inauspiciously opened the campaign against the 
Confederacy. The impression produced on both sides 
was great. The North set its teeth and determined to 
wipe out the disgrace at the first possible moment. The 
South was wild with joy. The too-prevalent impression 
that the "Yankees" were cowards who could not and 
would not fight seemed confirmed by the first practical 
experiment. The whole subsequent course of the war 
showed how false was this impression. It has been ad- 
mitted that the Southerners were at first, on the whole, 
both better fitted and better prepared for war than their 
opponents. But all military history shows that what en- 
ables soldiers to face defeat and abstain from panic in 
the face of apparent disaster is not natural courage, but 
discipline. Had the fight gone the other way the South- 
ern recruits would probably have acted exactly as did 
the: fugitive! (Northerners. Indeed, as it was, at an 



SECESSION AND CIVIL WAR 249 

earlier stage of the battle a panic among the Southerners 
was only averted by the personal exertions of Beaure- 
gard, whose horse was shot under him, and by the good 
conduct of the Virginian contingent and its leader. 
"Look at Jackson and his Virginians," cried out the 
Southern commander in rallying his men, "standing 
like a stone wall." The great captain thus acclaimed 
bore ever after, through his brief but splendid military 
career, the name of "Stonewall" Jackson. 

Bull Run was fought and won in July. The only 
other important operations of the year consisted in the 
successful clearing of Western Virginia by the Northern 
commander, McClellan. In recognition of this service 
he was appointed, in succession to McDowell, to the com- 
mand of the army of the Potomac, as the force entrusted 
with the invasion of Eastern Virginia was called. Be- 
fore, however, he was ready to move again on Richmond 
the skies were clouded by an international incident 
fraught with the gravest peril to the Union cause. 

At the first outbreak of the war English sympathies, 
except perhaps for a part of the travelled and more or 
less cosmopolitan aristocracy which found the Southern 
gentleman a more socially acceptable type than the 
Yankee, seem to have been decidedly with the North. 
Public opinion in this country was strong against Slavery, 
and therefore tended to support the Free States in the 
contest of which Slavery was generally believed to be 
the cause. Later this feeling became a little confused. 
The people did not understand the peculiar historical 
conditions which bound the Northern side, and were 
puzzled and their enthusiasm damped by the President's 
declaration that he had no intention of interfering with 
Slavery, and still more by the resolution whereby Con- 
gress specifically limited the objective of the war to 



250 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

the preservation of the Union, expressly guaranteeing 
the permanence of Slavery as a domestic institution. 
These things made it easy for the advocates of the 
South to maintain that Slavery had nothing to do with 
the issue — as, indeed, directly, it had not. Then came 
Bull Run — the sort of Jack-the-Giant-Killer incident 
which always and in a very human fashion excites the 
admiration of sportsmanlike foreigners. One may add 
to this the fact that the intelligent governing class at 
that time generally regarded the Americans, as the Amer- 
icans regarded us, as rivals and potential enemies, and 
would not have been sorry to see one strong power in 
the New World replaced by two weak ones. On the 
other hand, the British Government's very proper 
proclamation of neutrality as between the United States 
and the Confederacy had been somewhat unreasonably 
criticized in America. 

Yet the general sympathy with the Free as against the 
Slave States might have had a better chance of surviv- 
ing but for the occurrence in November, 1861, of what 
is called the French affair. The Confederacy was natu- 
rally anxious to secure recognition from the Powers of 
Western Europe, and with this object despatched two 
representatives, Mason of Virginia and Slidell of South 
Carolina, the one accredited to the Court of St. James's 
and the other to the Tuilleries. They took passage to 
Europe on a British ship called the Trent. The United 
States cruiser San Jacinto, commanded by Captain 
Wilkes of the American Navy, overhauled this vessel, 
searched it and seized and carried off the two Confeder- 
ate envoys. 

The act was certainly a breach of international law; 
but that was almost the smallest part of its irritant effect. 
In every detail it was calculated to outrage British senti- 






SECESSION AND CIVIL WAR 251 

ments. It was an affront offered to us on our own tra- 
ditional element — the sea. It was also a blow offered to 
our traditional pride as impartial protectors of political 
exiles of all kinds. The Times — in those days a re- 
sponsible and influential organ of opinion — said quite 
truly that the indignation felt here had nothing to do 
with approval of the rebellion; that it would have been 
just as strong if instead of Mason and Slidell, the vic- 
tims had been two of their own Negro slaves. Indeed, 
for us there were no longer Northern and Southern sym- 
pathizers: there were only Englishmen indignant at an 
insult openly offered to the Union Jack. Northerners 
might have understood us better, and been less angry 
at our attitude, if they had remembered how they them- 
selves had felt when the guns opened on Sumter. 

The evil was aggravated by the triumphant rejoicings 
with which the North celebrated the capture and by the 
complicity of responsible and even official persons in the 
honours showered on Captain Wilkes. Seward, who 
had a wild idea that a foreign quarrel would help to 
heal domestic dissensions, was somewhat disposed to 
defend the capture. But the eminently just mind of 
Lincoln quickly saw that it could not be defended, while 
his prudence perceived the folly of playing the Southern 
game by forcing England to recognize the Confederacy. 
Mason and Slidell were returned, and the affair as a 
diplomatic incident was closed. But it had its part in 
breeding in these islands a certain antagonism to the 
Government at Washington, and thus encouraging the 
growing tendency to sympathize with the South. 

With the opening of the new year the North was 
cheered by a signal and very important success. In the 
course of February Fort Henry and Fort Donelson, es- 
sential strategic points on the front which the Con fed- 



252 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

erate invaders had stretched across Southern Kentucky, 
were captured by General Ulysses Grant, in command 
of a Western army. The Confederate forces were com- 
pelled to a general retirement, sacrificing the defensive 
line for the sake of which they had turned the "neutral" 
border State into an enemy, uncovering the whole of 
Western Tennessee, including the capital of Nashville, 
and also yielding the upper Mississippi. The impor- 
tance of the latter gain — for the Mississippi, once mas- 
tered, would cut the Confederacy in two — was clearly 
apparent to Beauregard, who at once marched northward 
and attacked Grant at Shiloh. The battle was inde- 
cisive, but in its military effect it was a success for the 
North. Grant was compelled to abandon the ground 
upon which his army stood, but he kept all the fruits of 
his recent campaign. 

Another incident, not only picturesque in itself but of 
great importance in the history of naval war, marks the 
opening months of 1862. After the failure of the first 
attempt to take Richmond by a coup de main the war 
became in its essence a siege of the Confederacy. To 
give it this character, however, one thing was essential — 
the control of the sea by the Union forces. The regular 
United States navy — unlike the regular army, which was 
divided — was fully under the control of the Federal 
Government, and was able to blockade the Southern 
ports. Davis had attempted to meet this menace by issu- 
ing letters of marque to privateers; but this could be 
little more than an irritant to the dominant Power. It 
so happened, however, that a discovery had recently been 
made which was destined to revolutionize the whole 
character of naval war. Experiments in the steel-plating 
of ships had already been made in England and in 
France, but the first war vessel so fitted for practical use 



SECESSION AND CIVIL WAR 253 

was produced by the Southern Confederacy — the cele- 
brated Merrimac. One fine day she steamed into Hamp- 
ton Roads under the guns of the United States fleet and 
proceeded to sink ship after ship, the heavy round shot 
leaping off her like peas. It was a perilous moment, but 
the Union Government had only been a day behind in 
perfecting the same experiment. Next day the Monitor 
arrived on the scene, and the famous duel between the 
first two ironclads ever constructed commenced. Each 
proved invulnerable to the other, for neither side had yet 
constructed pieces capable of piercing protection, but 
the victory was so far with the North that the hope that 
the Confederacy might obtain, by one bold and inventive 
stroke, the mastery of the sea was for the moment at 
an end. 

Meanwhile all eyes were fixed on McClellan, who was 
busy turning the mob that had fled from Bull Run into 
an army. His work of organization and discipline was 
by common consent admirable; yet when the time came 
when he might be expected to take the field, that defect 
in his quality as a commander showed itself which was to 
pursue him throughout his campaigns. He was extrava- 
gantly over-cautious. His unwillingness to fight, com- 
bined with the energy he put into bringing the army into 
an efficient state and gaining influence over its officers 
and men, gave rise to the wildest rumours and charges. 
It was suggested that he intended to use the force he was 
forming, not against Richmond but against Washington ; 
to seize supreme power by military force and reconcile 
the warring States under the shadow of his sword. It is 
certain that there was no shadow of foundation for such 
suspicions. He was a perfectly patriotic and loyal sol- 
dier who had studied his profession diligently. Perhaps 
he had studied it too diligently. He seems to have re- 



254 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

solved never to risk an engagement unless under condi- 
tions which according to the text-books should assure 
victory. Ideal conditions of this sort were not likely 
to occur often in real war, especially when waged against 
such an antagonist as Robert Lee. 

McClellan remained in front of the Confederate posi- 
tions throughout the winter and early spring. In reply 
to urgent appeals from Washington he declared the posi- 
tion of the enemy to be impregnable, and grossly exag- 
gerated his numbers. When at last, at the beginning of 
March, he was induced to move forward, he found that 
the enemy had slipped away, leaving behind, as if in 
mockery, a large number of dummy wooden guns which 
had helped to impress McClellan with the hopelessness 
of assailing his adversaries. 

The wooden guns, however little damage they could do 
to the Federal army, did a good deal of damage to the 
reputation of the Federal commander. Lincoln, though 
pressed to replace him, refused to do so, having no one 
obviously better to put in his room, and knowing that 
the outcry against him was partly political — for Mc Clel- 
lan was a Democrat. The general now undertook the exe- 
cution of a plan of his own for the reduction of Rich- 
mond. Leaving McDowell on the Potomac, he trans- 
ported the greater part of his force by water and effected 
a landing on the peninsula of Yorktown, where some 
eighty years before Cornwallis had surrendered to Wash- 
ington and Rochambeau. 

The plan was not a bad one, but the general showed 
the same lack of enterprise which had made possible the 
escape of Johnston. It is probable that if he had struck 
at once at the force opposed to him, he could have de- 
stroyed it and marched to Richmond almost unopposed. 

Instead of striking at a vulnerable point he sat down 



SECESSION AND CIVIL WAR 255 

in a methodical fashion to besiege Yorktown. While 
he was waiting for the reinforcements he had demanded, 
the garrison got away as Johnston had done from before 
Manassas, and an attempt to push forward resulted in 
the defeat of his lieutenant Hooker at Williamsburg:. 

McDowell, who was at Fredericksburg, was ordered 
to join and reinforce McClellan, but the junction was 
never made, for at the moment Jackson took the field 
and effected one of the most brilliant exploits of the war. 
The Union troops in the Shenandoah Valley were much 
more numerous than the force which Jackson had at his 
disposal, but they were scattered at various points, and 
by a series of incalculably rapid movements the Southern 
captain attacked and overwhelmed each in turn. The 
alarm at Washington was great, and McDowell hastened 
to cut him off, only to discover that Jackson had slipped 
past him and was back in his own country. Meanwhile 
McClellan, left without the reinforcements he had ex- 
pected, was attacked by Lee and beaten back in seven 
days' consecutive fighting right to Harrison's Landing, 
where he could only entrench himself and stand on the 
defensive. Richmond was as far off as ever. 

One piece of good news, however, reached Washington 
at about this time, and once again it came from the 
West. Towards the end of April Farragut, the Ameri- 
can admiral, captured the city of New Orleans. The 
event was justly thought to be of great importance, for 
Grant already dominated the Upper Mississippi, and if 
he could join hands with a Union force operating from 
the mouth of the great rivjir, the Confederacy would be 
cut in two. 

Perhaps the contrast between the good fortune which 
had attended the Federal arms in the West and the fail- 
ure of the campaign in Eastern Virginia was responsible 



256 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

for the appointment of a general taken from the Western 
theatre of war to command the army of the Potomac. 
Lincoln, having supported McClellan as long as he could, 
was now obliged to abandon his cause, and General Pope 
was appointed to supreme command of the campaign in 
Eastern Virginia. 

The change brought no better fortune; indeed, it was 
the prelude to a disaster worse than any that McClellan 
had suffered. Pope advanced by the route of the original 
invasion, and reached exactly the point where McDowell's 
army had been routed. Here he paused and waited. 
While he lay there Jackson made another of his daring 
raids, got between him and Washington and cut his com- 
munications, while Lee fell upon him and utterly de- 
stroyed his army in the second battle of Bull Run. 

Lee's victory left him in full possession of the initia- 
tive with no effective force immediately before him and 
with a choice of objectives. It was believed by many 
that he would use his opportunity to attack Washington. 
But he wisely refrained from such an attempt. Wash- 
ington was guarded by a strong garrison, and its de- 
fences had been carefully prepared. To take it would 
involve at least something like a siege, and while he 
was reducing it the North would have the breathing 
space it needed to rally its still unexhausted powers. He 
proposed to himself an alternative, which, if he had been 
right in his estimate of the political factors, would have 
given him Washington and much more, and probably 
decided the war in favour of the Confederacy. He 
crossed the Potomac and led his army into Maryland. 

The stroke was as much political as military in its 
character. Maryland was a Southern State. There 
was a sort of traditional sisterhood between her and 
Virginia. Though she had not seceded, it was thought 



SECESSION AND CIVIL WAR 257 

that her sympathies must be with the South. The attack 
on the Union troops in Baltimore at the beginning of the 
war had seemed strong confirmation of this belief. The 
general impression in the South which the Southern 
general probably shared was that Maryland was at heart 
secessionist, and that a true expression of her will was 
prevented only by force. The natural inference was that 
when a victorious Southern commander appeared within 
her borders, the people would rally to him as one man, 
Washington would be cut off from the North, the Presi- 
dent captured, the Confederacy recognized by the Euro- 
pean Powers, and the North would hardly continue the 
hopeless struggle. This idea was embodied in a fierce 
war-song which had recently become popular throughout 
the Confederate States and was caught up by Lee's sol- 
diers on their historic march. It began — 

"The despot's heel is on thy shore, 
Maryland! My Maryland!" 

And it ended — 

"She is not dead, nor deaf, nor dumb! 
Hurrah ! She spurns the Yankee scum ! 
She breathes ! She lives ! She'll come ! she'll come ! 
Maryland! My Maryland!" 

But Maryland did not come. The whole political con- 
ception which underlay Lee's move was false. It may 
seem curious that those who, when everything seemed 
to be in favour of the North, had stoned Union soldiers 
in the streets of the State capital, should not have moved 
a finger when a great Southern soldier came among them 
with the glamour of victory around him and proclaimed 
himself their liberator. Yet so it proved. The prob- 
able explanation is that, Maryland lying under the 



258 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

shadow of the capital, which was built for the most part 
on her territory, Lincoln could deal with her people 
directly. And wherever he could get men face to face 
and show the manner of man he was, he could persuade. 
Maryland was familiar with "the despot" and did not 
find his "heel" at all intolerable. The image of the 
horrible hairy Abolitionist gloating constantly over the 
thought of a massacre of Southerners by Negroes, which 
did duty for a portrait of Lincoln in the South, was 
not convincing to Marylanders, who knew the man him- 
self and found him a kindly, shrewd, and humorous man 
of the world, with much in his person and character that 
recalled his Southern origin, who enforced the law with 
strict impartiality wherever his power extended, and 
who, above all, punctiliously returned any fugitive slaves 
that might seek refuge in the District of Columbia. 

Lee issued a dignified and persuasive proclamation in 
which he declared that he came among the people of 
Maryland as a friend and liberator. But Maryland 
showed no desire to be liberated. He and his soldiers 
were everywhere coldly received. Hardly a volunteer 
joined them. In many towns Union flags were flaunted 
in their faces — a fact upon which is based the fictitious 
story of Barbara Frietchie. 

The political failure of the move led to considerable 
military embarrassments. Lee met with no defeat in 
arms, but his difficulties increased day by day. 

Believing that he would be operating among a friendly 
population he had given less thought than he would 
otherwise have done to the problem of supplies, suppos- 
ing that he could obtain all he needed from the country. 
That problem now became acute, for the Marylanders 
refused to accept the Confederate paper which was all 
he had to tender in payment, and the fact that he pro- 



SECESSION AND CIVIL WAR 259 

fessed to be their liberator actually made his position 
more difficult, for he could not without sacrificing a great 
moral advantage treat them avowedly as an enemy peo- 
ple. He found himself compelled to send Jackson back 
to hold Harper's Ferry lest his communications might be 
endangered. Later he learnt that McClellan, who had 
been restored to the chief command after Pope's defeat, 
was moving to cut off his retreat. He hastened back 
towards his base, and the two armies met by Antietam 
Creek. 

Antietam was not really a Union victory. It was fol- 
lowed by the retirement of Lee into Virginia, but it is 
certain that such retirement had been intended by him 
from the beginning — was indeed his objective. The ob- 
jective of McClellan was, or should have been, the de- 
struction of the Confederate army, and this was not 
achieved. Yet, as marking the end of the Southern com- 
mander's undoubted fortune in Maryland, it offered 
enough of the appearance of a victory to justify in 
Lincoln's judgment an executive act upon which he had 
determined some months earlier, but which he thought 
would have a better effect coming after a military suc- 
cess than in time of military weakness and peril. 

We have seen that both the President and Congress 
had been careful to insist that the war was not under- 
taken on behalf of the Negroes. Yet the events of the 
war had forced the problem of the Negro into promi- 
nence. Fugitive slaves from the rebel States took refuge 
with the Union armies, and the question of what should 
be done with them was forced on the Government. 
Lincoln knew that in this matter he must move with the 
utmost caution. When in the early days of the war, 
Fremont, who had been appointed military commander 
in Missouri, where he showed an utter unfitness, both 



860 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATUS 

intellectual and moral, for his place, proclaimed on his 
own responsibility the email* ipation oi the slaves of "die- 
loyal" owner., hie headstrong vanity would probably 

have ilnowii hoili Mr/,ouri and Kentucky into the arms 
of the Confederacy if the President had not promptly 
disavowed him- Later he disavowed a limilai pro* lama 
tion by General Hunter, When a deputation of min 
istere oi religion from ( hicago urged on him the desira 
hility of immediate action against Slavery, he md them 
wiih a reply the opening passage oi which ii one of the 
world'', masterpieces oi irony. When Horace Greeley 
backed the same appeal with liis "Prayer of Twenty 
Millions," Lincoln in a brief letter summarized hia policy 
wiili In i usual lucidity and for* e. 

"My paramounl objed in thii struggle ii to save the 
Union, and is not either to save or to destroy Slavery. 
ii I could save the Union without freeing any '.lave,, I 
would do ii ; and if I could save it l>y freeing some and 
leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do 

abOUt Slavery and die coloiued race, I do hccailSC I 

believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, 
I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save 

the I Inion." 

At the time he wrote these words Lincoln had already 

decided on a polity of military emancipation in the rebel 
Slates. He doubtless wrote them with an eye to the 
possible effects of that policy. lie wished the Northern 
I democrats and the I hiioni ,ts ol I'.oider States to iinder- 
Btand that his action was ha\ed upon coir.ider.it ions of 

military expediency and in no way upon in , personal dis- 
approval of Slavery, of which at the same timr lie made 
no recantation. ( )n the military ground he had a Strong 
Case. II, as the South maintained, the slave was simply 

.i piece of property, then the slave of a rebel was a piece 



SECESSION AND CIVIL WAR £61 

of enemy property — an enemy property used Of USable 

for purposes of war. To confiscate enemy property 

which may he of military use was a practice afl old as war 

itself. The same principle which justified the North in 
destroying a Southern cotton crop or tearing up the 
Southern railways justified the emancipation of Negroes 
within the bounds of the Southern Confederacy. Iii 
consonance with this principle Lincoln issued on Sep- 
tember 22nd a proclamation declaring slaves free as from 
January i, 1863, ' n '"'}' districts as the President should 
on that date specify as being in rebellion againsl the 
Federal Government Thus a chance was deliberately 
left open for any State, or part of a State, to save the 
slaves by submission. At the same time Lincoln preserved 
the strenuous efforts which he had already made more 
than once to induce the Slave States which remained in 
the Union to consent voluntarily to some scheme of 
gradual and compensated emancipation. 

One effed of the Emancipation Proclamation upon 
which Lincoln had calculated was the approval of the 
civilized world and especially of England. This was al 
that moment of the more importatu <■ because the growing 
tendency of Englishmen to sympathize with the South, 
which was largely the product of Jackson's daring and 
picturesque exploits, had already produced a teries of 
incidents which nearly involved the two nations in war. 
'i he 'lii':f of these was the matter of the Alabama. 'I hi 1 
cruiser was buih and fitted up in the dockyards of Li 
pool by the British firm of Laird. She was intended, -'••. 

tli': contractors of course knew, for the scrvife of the 

Confederacy, and, when completed, she took to tin 
under pretext of a trial trip, in spite of the protests of 
the representative of the American Republic. The order 
to detain her arrived too late, and she reached a South- 



262 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

ern port, whence she issued to become a terror to the 
commerce of the United States. That the fitting up of 
such a vessel, if carried out with the complicity of the 
Government, was a gross breach of neutrality is unques- 
tionable. That the Government of Lord Russell con- 
nived at the escape of the Alabama, well knowing her 
purpose and character, though generally believed in 
America at the time, is most unlikely. That the truth 
was known to the authorities at Liverpool, where South- 
ern sympathies were especially strong, is on the other 
hand almost certain, and these authorities must be held 
mainly responsible for misleading the Government and 
so preventing compliance with the quite proper demands 
of Adams, the American Ambassador. Finally, an In- 
ternational Court found that Great Britain had not 
shown "reasonable care" in fulfilling her obligations, and 
in this verdict a fair-minded student of the facts will 
acquiesce. At a later date we paid to the United States 
a heavy sum as compensation for the depredations of 
the Alabama. 

Meanwhile, neither Antietam nor the Proclamation 
appeared to bring any luck to the Union armies in the 
field. McClellan showed his customary over-caution in 
allowing Lee to escape unhampered; once more he was 
superseded, and once more his supersession only replaced 
inaction by disaster. Hooker, attempting an invasion of 
Virginia, got caught in the tangled forest area called "the 
Wilderness." Jackson rode round him, cutting his com- 
munications and so forcing him to fight, and Lee beat 
him soundly at Chancellorsville. The battle was, how- 
ever, won at a heavy cost to the Confederacy, for to- 
wards the end of the day the mistake of a picket caused 
the death by a Southern bullet of the most brilliant, if 
not the greatest, of Southern captains. As to what that 



SECESSION AND CIVIL WAR 263 

loss meant we have the testimony of his chief and com- 
rade-in-arms. "If I had had Jackson with me," said 
Lee after Gettysburg, "I should have won a complete 
victory." This, however, belongs to a later period. 
Burnside, succeeding Hooker, met at Lee's hands with 
an even more crushing defeat at Fredericksburg. 

And now, as a result of these Southern successes, be- 
gan to become dangerous that factor on which the South 
had counted from the first — the increasing weariness and 
division of the North. I have tried in these pages to put 
fairly the case for the defeated side in the CivilWar. 
But one can have a reasonable understanding of and 
even sympathy with the South without having any sym- 
pathy to waste on those who in the North were called 
"Copperheads." A Northerner might, indeed, honestly 
think the Southern cause just and coercion of the seced- 
ing States immoral. But if so he should have been 
opposed to such coercion from the first. The Confed- 
erate case was in no way morally stronger in 1863 than 
it had been in 1861. If, therefore, a man had been in 
favour of coercion in 1861 — as practically all Northern- 
ers were — his weakening two years later could not point 
to an unwillingness to do injustice, but only to the opera- 
tion of fear or fatigue as deterrents from action believed 
to be just. Moreover, the ordinary "Copperhead" posi- 
tion was so plainly in contradiction of known facts that 
it must be pronounced either imbecile or dishonest. If 
these men had urged the acceptance of disunion as an 
accomplished fact, a case might be made out for them. 
But they generally professed the strongest desire to re- 
store the Union accompanied by vehement professions of 
the belief that this could in some fashion be achieved by 
"negotiation." The folly of such a supposition was 
patent. The Confederacy was in arms for the one spe- 



264 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

cific purpose of separating itself from the Union, and 
so far its appeal to arms had been on the whole success- 
ful. That it would give up the single object for which 
it was fighting for any other reason than military defeat 
was, on the face of it, quite insanely unlikely; and, as 
might have been expected, the explicit declarations of 
Davis and all the other Confederate leaders were at this 
time uniformly to the effect that peace could be had by 
the recognition of Southern independence and in no 
other fashion. The "Copperheads," however, seem to 
have suffered from that amazing illusion which we have 
learnt in recent times to associate with the Russian Bol- 
sheviki and their admirers in other countries — the illu- 
sion that if one side leaves off fighting the other side 
will immediately do the same, though all the objects for 
which it ever wanted to fight are unachieved. They per- 
sisted in maintaining that in some mysterious fashion 
the President's "ambition" was standing between the 
country and a peace based on reunion. The same folly 
was put forward by Greeley, perhaps the most consist- 
ently wrong-headed of American public men: in him it 
was the more absurd since on the one issue, other than 
that of union or separation, which offered any possible 
material for a compromise, that of Slavery, he was pro- 
fessedly against all compromise, and blamed the Presi- 
dent for attempting any. 

Little as can be said for the "Copperhead" temper, its 
spread in the Northern States during the second year of 
the war was a serious menace to the Union cause. It 
showed itself in the Congressional elections, when the 
Government's majority was saved only by the loyalty of 
the Border Slave States, whose support Lincoln had been 
at pains to conciliate in the face of so much difficulty and 
misunderstanding. It showed itself in the increased 



SECESSION AND CIVIL WAR 265 

activity of pacifist agitators, of whom the notorious 
Vallandigham may be taken as a type. 

Lincoln met the danger in two fashions. He met the 
arguments and appeals of the "Copperheads" with un- 
answerable logic and with that lucidity of thought and 
expression of which he was a master. One pronounce- 
ment of his is worth quoting, and one wishes that it could 
have been reproduced everywhere at the time of the 
ridiculous Stockholm project. "Suppose refugees from 
the South and peace men of the North get together and 
frame and proclaim a compromise embracing a restora- 
tion of the Union : in what way can that compromise be 
used to keep Lee's army out of Pennsylvania? Meade's 
army can keep Lee's out of Pennsylvania, and, I think, 
can ultimately drive it out of existence. But no paper 
compromise, to which the controllers of Lee's army are 
not agreed, can at all affect that army." Reasoning 
could not be more conclusive; but Lincoln did not stop 
at reasoning. Now was to be shown how powerful an 
instrument of authority the Jacksonian revolution had 
created in the popular elective Presidency. Perhaps no 
single man ever exercised so much direct personal power 
as did Abraham Lincoln* during those four years of Civil 
War. The Habeas Corpus Act was suspended by execu- 
tive decree, and those whose action was thought a 
hindrance to military success were arrested in shoals 
by the orders of Stanton, the new energetic War Secre- 
tary, a Jacksonian Democrat whom Lincoln had put in 
the place of an incompetent Republican, though he had 
served under Buchanan and supported Breckenridge. 
The constitutional justification of these acts was widely 
challenged, but the people in the main supported the 
Executive. 

Lincoln, like Jackson, understood the populace and 



266 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

knew just how to appeal to them. "Must I shoot a 
simple-minded boy for deserting, and spare the wily- 
agitator whose words induce him to desert?" Vallan- 
digham himself met a measure of justice characteristic 
of the President's humour and almost recalling the juris- 
prudence of Sir W. S. Gilbert's Mikado. Originally 
condemned to detention in a fortress, his sentence was 
commuted by Lincoln to banishment, and he was con- 
ducted by the President's orders across the army lines 
and dumped on the Confederacy! He did not stay there 
long. The Southerners had doubtless some reason to 
be grateful to him; but they cannot possibly have liked 
him. With their own Vallandighams they had an even 
shorter way. 

The same sort of war-weariness was perhaps a con- 
tributory cause of an even more serious episode — the 
Draft Riots of New York City. Here, however, a spe- 
cial and much more legitimate ground of protest was 
involved. The Confederacy had long before imposed 
Conscription upon the youth of the South. It was im- 
perative that the North should do the same, and, though 
the constitutional power of the Federal Government to 
make such a call was questioned, its moral right to do so 
seems to me unquestionable, for if the common Govern- 
ment has not the right in the last resort to call upon all 
citizens to defend its own existence, it is difficult to see 
what rights it can possess. Unfortunately, Congress 
associated with this just claim a provision for which 
there was plenty of historical precedent but no justifica- 
tion in that democratic theory upon which the American 
Commonwealth was built. It provided that a man whose 
name had been drawn could, if he chose, pay a substi- 
tute to serve in his stead. This was obviously a privi- 
lege accorded to mere wealth, odious to the morals of 



SECESSION AND CIVIL WAR 267 

the Republic and especially odious to the very democratic 
populace of New York. The drawing of the names was 
there interrupted by violence, and for some days the 
city was virtually in the hands of the insurgents. The 
popular anger was complicated by a long-standing racial 
feud between the Irish and the Negroes, and a good many 
lynchings took place. At last order was restored by the 
police, who used to restore it with a violence as savage 
as that of the crowd they were suppressing. 

We must now turn back to the military operations. 
Lee had once more broken through, and was able to 
choose the point where a sortie might most effectually 
be made. He resolved this time to strike directly at the 
North itself, and crossing a strip of Maryland he invaded 
Pennsylvania, his ultimate objective being probably the 
great bridge over the Susquehanna at Harrisburg,' the 
destruction of which would seriously hamper communi- 
cation between North and West. At first he met with 
no opposition, but a Federal army under Meade started 
in pursuit of him and caught him up at Gettysburg. In 
the battle which followed, as at Valmy, each side had 
its back to its own territory. The invader, though in- 
ferior in numbers, was obliged by the conditions of the 
struggle to take the offensive. The main feature of the 
fighting was the charge and repulse of Pickett's Brigade. 
Both sides stood appalling losses with magnificent steadi- 
ness. The Union troops maintained their ground in 
spite of all that Southern valour could do to dislodge 
them. It is generally thought that if Meade had fol- 
lowed up his success by a vigorous offensive Lee's army 
might have been destroyed. As things were, having 
failed in its purpose of breaking the ring that held the 
Confederacy, it got back into Virginia unbroken and 
almost unpunished. 



268 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

Gettysburg is generally considered as the turning-point 
of the war, though perhaps from a purely military point 
of view more significance ought to be attached to another 
success which almost exactly synchronized with it. The 
same 4th of July whereon the North learnt of Lee's fail- 
ure brought news of the capture of Vicksburg by Grant. 
This meant that the whole course of the Mississippi was 
now in Federal hands, and made possible an invasion 
of the Confederacy from the West such as ultimately 
effected its overthrow. 

Lincoln, whose judgment in such matters was excep- 
tionally keen for a civilian, had long had his eye on 
Grant. He had noted his successes and his failures, and 
he had noted especially in him the quality which he could 
not find in McClellan or in Meade — a boldness of plan, 
a readiness to take risks, and above all a disposition to 
press a success vigorously home even at a heavy sacrifice. 
"I can't spare that man; he fights," he had said when 
some clamoured for Grant's recall after Shiloh. For 
those who warned him that Grant was given to heavy 
drinking he had an even more characteristic reply: "I 
wish I knew what whisky he drinks : I would send a cask 
to some of the other generals." 

Meade's hesitation after Gettysburg and Grant's 
achievement at Vicksburg between them decided him. 
Grant was now appointed to supreme command of all 
the armies of the Union. 

Ulysses S. Grant stands out in history as one of those 
men to v/hom a uniform seems to be salvation. As a 
young man he had fought with credit in the Mexican war ; 
later he had left the army, and seemingly "gone to the 
dogs." He took to drink. He lost all his employments. 
He became to all appearances an incorrigible waster, a 
rolling stone, a man whom his old friends crossed the 



SECESSION AND CIVIL WAR 269 

road to avoid because a meeting with him always meant 
an attempt to borrow money. 

Then came the war, and Grant grasped — as such 
broken men often do — at the chance of a new start. Not 
without hesitation, he was entrusted with a subordinate 
command in the West, and almost at once he justified 
those who had been ready to give him a trial by his 
brilliant share in the capture of Fort Donelson. From 
that moment he was a new man, repeatedly displaying 
not only soldierly qualities of iron courage and a thor- 
ough grasp of the practice of fighting, but moral quali- 
ties of a high order, a splendid tenacity in disaster and 
hope deferred, and in victory a noble magnanimity to- 
wards the conquered. One wishes that the story could 
end there. But it must, unfortunately, be added that 
when at last he laid aside his sword he seemed to lay 
aside all that was best in him with it, while the weak- 
nesses of character which were so conspicuous in Mr. 
Ulysses Grant, and which seemed so completely bled 
out of General Grant, made many a startling and dis- 
astrous reappearance in President Grant. 

Grant arrived at Washington and saw the President 
for the first time. The Western campaign he left in 
the hands of two of his ablest lieutenants — Sherman, 
perhaps in truth the greatest soldier that appeared on the 
Northern side, and Thomas, a Virginian Unionist who 
had left his State at the call of his country. There was 
much work for them to do, for while the capture of 
Vicksburg and its consequences gave them the Missis- 
sippi, the first attempt to invade from that side under 
Rosecrans had suffered defeat in the bloody battle of 
the Chickamauga. Sherman and Thomas resolved to 
reverse this unfavourable decision and attacked at the 
same crucial point. An action lasting four days and 



270 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

full of picturesque episodes gave them the victory which 
was the starting-point of all that followed. To that 
action belongs the strange fight of Lookout Mountain 
fought "above the clouds" by men who could not see the 
wide terrain for the mastery of which they were con- 
tending, and the marvellous charge of the Westerners up 
Missionary Ridge, one of those cases where soldiers, 
raised above themselves and acting without orders, have 
achieved a feat which their commander had dismissed as 
impossible. To the whole action is given the name of 
the Battle of Chattanooga, and its effect was to give 
Sherman the base he needed from which to strike at the 
heart of the Confederacy. 

Grant in Virginia was less successful. An examina- 
tion of his campaign will leave the impression that, how- 
ever superior he was to previous Northern commanders 
in energy, as a strategist he was no match for Lee. The 
Southern general, with inferior forces, captured the ini- 
tiative and did what he chose with him, caught him in 
the Wilderness as he had previously caught Hooker, and 
kept him there on ground which gave every advantage 
to the Confederate forces, who knew every inch of it, 
where Grant's superiority in numbers could not be 
brought fully into play, and where his even greater 
superiority in artillery was completely neutralized. At 
the end of a week's hard fighting, Grant had gained no 
advantage, while the Northern losses were appalling — 
as great as the total original numbers of the enemy that 
inflicted them. At Spottsylvania, where Grant at- 
tempted a flanking movement, the same tactics were pur- 
sued with the same success, while a final attempt of the 
Northern general at a frontal assault ended in a costly 
defeat. 

In the darkest hour of this campaign Grant had told 



SECESSION AND CIVIL WAR 271 

the Government at Washington that he would "fight it 
out on that line if it took all the summer." It was, how- 
ever, on another line that the issue was being fought out 
and decided against the Confederacy. From Chat- 
tanooga Sherman moved on Atlanta, the capital of 
Georgia. Joseph Johnston disputed every step of the 
advance, making it as costly as possible, but wisely re- 
fused to risk his numerically inferior army in a general 
engagement. He fell back slowly, making a stand here 
and there, till the Northern general stood before Atlanta. 
It was at this moment that the leaders of the Con- 
federacy would have acted wisely in proposing terms of 
peace. Their armies were still in being, and could even 
boast conspicuous and recent successes. If the war went 
on it would probably be many months before the end 
came, while the North was bitterly weary of the slaughter 
and would not tolerate the refusal of reasonable settle- 
ment. Yet, if the war went on, the end could no longer 
be in doubt. Had that golden moment been seized, the 
seceding States might have re-entered the Union almost 
on their own terms. Certainly they could have avoided 
the abasement and humiliation which was to come upon 
them as the consequence of continuing their resistance 
till surrender had to be unconditional. It might seem at 
first that Emancipation Proclamation had introduced an 
additional obstacle to accommodation. But this was 
largely neutralized by the fact that every one, including 
Jefferson Davis himself, recognized that Slavery had 
been effectively destroyed by the war and could never 
be revived, even were the South victorious. The accep- 
tance by the Confederacy of a policy suggested by Lee 
whereby Negroes were to be enlisted as soldiers and freed 
on enlistment, clinched this finally. On the other hand, 
Lincoln let it be clearly understood that if the Union 



272 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

could be restored by consent he was prepared to advo- 
cate the compensation of Southern owners for the loss 
of their slaves. The blame for the failure to take ad- 
vantage of this moment must rest mainly on Davis. It 
was he who refused to listen to any terms save the 
recognition of Southern independence; and this attitude 
doomed the tentative negotiations entered into at Hamp- 
ton Roads to failure. 

Meanwhile, in the North, Lincoln was chosen Presi- 
dent for a second term. At one time his chances had 
looked gloomy enough. The Democratic Party had as- 
tutely chosen General McClellan as its candidate. His 
personal popularity with the troops, and the suggestion 
that he was an honest soldier ill-used by civilian politi- 
cians, might well gain him much support in the armies, 
for whose voting special provision had been made, while 
among the civil population he might expect the support 
of all who, for one reason or another, were discontented 
with the Government. At the same time the extreme 
Anti-Slavery wing of the Republican Party, alienated by 
the diplomacy of the President in dealing with the 
Border States, and by the moderation of his views con- 
cerning the Negro and his future, put forward another 
displaced general, Fremont. But in the end circum- 
stances and the confidence which his statesmanship had 
created combined to give Lincoln something like a walk- 
over. The Democratic Party got into the hands of the 
"Copperheads" at the very moment when facts were 
giving the lie to the "Copperhead" thesis. Its platforms 
described the course of the war as "four years of fail- 
ure," and its issue as hopeless, while before the voting 
began even a layman could see that the Confederacy was, 
from the military point of view, on its last legs. The 
War Democrats joined hands with the Republicans, and 



SECESSION AND CIVIL WAR 273 

the alliance was sealed by the selection of Andrew John- 
son, a Jacksonian Democrat from Tennessee, as candi- 
date for the Vice-Presidency. The Radical Republicans 
began to discover how strong a hold Lincoln had gained 
on the public mind in the North, and to see that by 
pressing their candidate they would only expose the 
weakness of their faction. Fremont was withdrawn 
and McClellan easily defeated. A curious error has been 
constantly repeated in print in this country to the effect 
that Lincoln was saved only by the votes of the army. 
There is no shadow of foundation for this statement. 
The proportion of his supporters among the soldiers was 
not much greater than among the civil population. But 
in both it was overwhelming. 

Meanwhile Atlanta had fallen, and Davis had unwisely 
relieved Johnston of his command. It was now that 
Sherman determined on the bold scheme which mainly 
secured the ultimate victory of the North. Cutting him- 
self loose from his base and abandoning all means of 
communication with the North, he advanced iriYo the 
country of the enemy, living on it and laying it waste as 
he passed. For a month his Government had no news 
of him. Ultimately he reached the sea at Savannah, 
and was able to tell his supporters that he had made a 
desert in the rear of the main Confederate armies. 
Thence he turned again, traversed South Carolina, and 
appeared, so to speak, on the flank of the main Confed- 
erate forces which were holding Grant. 

The ethics of Sherman's famous March to the Sea 
have been much debated. He was certainly justified by 
the laws of war in destroying the military resources of 
the Confederacy, and it does not seem that more than 
this was anywhere done by his orders. There was a 
good deal of promiscuous looting by his troops, and still 



274 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

more by camp followers and by the Negroes who, some- 
what to his annoyance, attached themselves to his col- 
umns. The march through South Carolina was the 
episode marked by the harshest conduct, for officers and 
men had not forgotten Sumter, and regarded the devas- 
tation of that State as a just measure of patriotic ven- 
geance on the only begetter of the rebellion; but the 
burning of Columbia seems to have been an accident, for 
which at least Sherman himself was not responsible. It 
is fair to him to add that in the very few cases — less than 
half a dozen in all — where a charge of rape or murder 
can be brought, the offender was punished with death. 

As a military stroke the March to the Sea was de- 
cisive. One sees its consequences at once in the events 
of the Virginian campaign. Lee had suffered no mili- 
tary defeat ; indeed, the balance of military success, so far 
as concerned the army directly opposed to him, was in 
his favour. Sheridan's campaign in the Shenandoah 
Valley had delighted the North as much as Jackson's 
earlier exploits in the same region had delighted the 
South ; but its direct military effect was not great. From 
the moment, however, of Sherman's successful comple- 
tion of his march, the problem of the Southern general 
becomes wholly different. It is no longer whether he 
can defeat the enemy, but whether he can save his army. 
He determined to abandon Richmond, and effect, if pos- 
sible, a union with Johnston, who was against watching 
and checking Sherman. 

Did space permit, it would be a noble task to chronicle 
the last wonderful fight of the Lion of the South; how, 
with an exhausted and continually diminishing army, he 
still proved how much he was to be feared ; how he turned 
on Sheridan and beat him, checked Grant and broke 



SECESSION AND CIVIL WAR 275 

away again only to find his path barred by another Union 
army. 

At Appomattox Court House the end came. The lion 
was trapped and caught at last. There was nothing for 
it but to make the best terms he could for his men. The 
two generals met. Both rose to the nobility of the occa- 
sion. Lee had never been anything but great, and Grant 
was never so great again. The terms accorded to the 
vanquished were generous and honourable to the utmost 
limit of the victor's authority. "This will have the 
happiest effect on my people," said Lee, in shaking hands 
with his conqueror. They talked a little of old times 
at West Point, where they had studied together, and 
parted. Lee rode away to his men and addressed them : 
"We have fought through this war together. I did my 
best for you." With these few words, worth volumes of 
Jefferson Davis's rather tiresome apologetics, one of the 
purest, bravest, and most chivalrous figures among those 
who have followed the noble profession of arms rides 
out of history. 



CHAPTER X 

"the black terror" 

The surrender of Lee's army was not actually the 
end of the war. The army of General Johnston and 
some smaller Confederacy forces were still in being; but 
their suppression seemed clearly only a matter of time, 
and all men's eyes were already turned to the problem 
of reconstruction, and on no man did the urgency of 
that problem press more ominously than on the President. 
Slavery was dead. This was already admitted in the 
South as well as in the North. Had the Confederacy, by 
some miracle, achieved its independence during the last 
year of the war, it is extremely unlikely that Slavery 
would have endured within its borders. This was the 
publicly expressed opinion of Jefferson Davis even be- 
fore the adoption of Lee's policy of recruiting slaves and 
liberating them on enlistment had completed the work 
which the Emancipation Proclamation of Lincoln had 
begun. Before the war was over, Missouri, where the 
Slavery problem was a comparatively small affair, and 
Maryland, which had always had a good record for 
humanity and justice in the treatment of its slave popula- 
tion, had declarated themselves Free States. The new 
Government organized under Lee's superintendence in 
the conquered parts of the Confederacy had followed 
suit. It was a comparatively easy matter to carry the 
celebrated Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution 
I declaring Slavery illegal throughout the Union. 

276 



"THE BLACK TERROR" 277 

But, as no one knew better than the President, the 
abolition of Slavery was a very different thing from 
the solution of the Negro problem. Six years before his 
election he had used of the problem of Slavery in the 
South these remarkable words : "I surely will not blame 
them (the Southerners) for not doing what I should not 
know how to do myself. If all earthly power was given 
I should not know what to do as to the existing institu- 
tion." The words now came back upon him with an 
awful weight which he fully appreciated. All earthly 
power was given — direct personal power to a degree per- 
haps unparalleled in history — and he had to find out 
what to do. 

His own belief appears always to have been that the 
only permanent solution of the problem was Jefferson's. 
He did not believe that black and white races would 
permanently live side by side on a footing of equality, 
and he loathed with all the loathing of a Kentuckian the 
thought of racial amalgamation. In his proposal to 
the Border States he had suggested repatriation in 
Africa, and he now began to develop a similar project 
on a larger scale. 

But the urgent problem of the reconstruction of the 
Union could not wait for the completion of so immense 
a task. The seceding States must be got into their 
proper relation with the Federal Government as quickly 
as possible, and Lincoln had clear ideas as to how this 
should be done. The reconstructive Government of 
Louisiana which he organized was a working model of 
what he proposed to do throughout the South. All citi- 
zens of the State who were prepared to take the oath of 
allegiance to the Federal Government were to be invited 
to elect a convention and frame a constitution. They 
were required to annul the ordinances of Secession, to 



278 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

ratify the Thirteenth Amendment, and to repudiate the 
Confederate Debt. The Executive would then recognize 
the State as already restored to its proper place within 
the Union, with the full rights of internal self-govern- 
ment which the Constitution guaranteed. The freed 
men were of course not citizens, and could, as such, take 
no part in these proceedings; but Lincoln recommended, 
without attempting to dictate, that the franchise should 
be extended to "the very intelligent and those who have 
fought for us during the war." 

Such was Lincoln's policy of reconstruction. He was 
anxious to get as much as possible of that policy in 
working order before Congress should meet. His fore- 
sight was justified, for as soon as Congress met the 
policy was challenged by the Radical wing of the Republi- 
can Party, whose spokesman was Senator Sumner of 
Massachusetts. 

Charles Sumner has already been mentioned in these 
pages. The time has come when something like a por- 
trait of him must be attempted. He was of a type which 
exists in all countries, but for which America has found 
the exact and irreplaceable name. He was a "high- 
brow." The phrase hardly needs explanation; it corre- 
sponds somewhat to what the French mean by intellec- 
tuel, but with an additional touch of moral priggishness 
which exactly suits Sumner. It does not, of course, im- 
ply that a man can think. Sumner was conspicuous even 
among politicians for his inaptitude in this respect. He 
was indeed incapable of following a line of consecutive 
thought. But it implies a pose of superiority both as 
regards culture and as regards what a man of that kind 
calls "idealism" which makes such a one peculiarly of- 
fensive to his fellow-men. "The Senator so conducts 
himself," said Fessenden, a Republican, and to a great 



"THE BLACK TERROR" 279 

extent an ally, "that he has no friends." He had a 
peculiar command of the language of insult and vitupera- 
tion that was all the more infuriating because obviously 
the product not of sudden temper, but of careful and 
scholarly preparation. In all matters requiring practical 
action he was handicapped by an incapacity for under- 
standing men ; in matters requiring lucidity of thought he 
exhibited a quite incomparable degree of puzzled 
stupidity. 

The thesis of which Sumner appeared as the champion 
was about as silly as ever a thesis could be. It was that 
the United States were bound by the doctrine set out in 
the Declaration of Independence to extend the Franchise 
indiscriminately to the Negroes. 

Had Sumner had any sense it might have occurred 
to him that the author of the Declaration of Indepen- 
dence might be presumed to have some knowledge of 
its meaning and content. Did Thomas Jefferson think 
that his d, octr i nes involve Negro Suffrage? So far 
from desiring that Negroes should vote with white men, 
he did not believe that they could even live in the same 
free community. Yet since Sumner's absurd fallacy has 
a certain historical importance through the influence it 
exerted on Northern opinion, it may be well to point out 
where it lay. 

The Declaration of Independence lays down three gen- 
eral principles fundamental to Democracy. One is that 
all men are equal in respect to their natural rights. The 
second is that the safeguarding of men's natural rights 
is the object of government. The third that the basis of 
government is contractual — its "just powers" being de- 
rived from the consent of the governed to an implied 
contract. 

The application of the first of these principles to the 



280 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

Negro is plain enough. Whatever else he was, the 
Negro was a man, and, as such, had an equal title with 
other men to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 
But neither Jefferson nor any other sane thinker ever 
included the electoral suffrage among the natural rights 
of men. Voting is part of the machinery of govern- 
ment in particular States. It is, in such communities, 
an acquired right depending according to the philosophy 
of the Declaration of Independence. 

Now if such a contract did really underlie American, 
as all human, society, nothing can be more certain than 
that the Negro had neither part nor lot in it. When 
Douglas pretended that the black race was not included 
in the expression "all men" he was talking sophistry, 
and when he said that the American Republic had been 
made "by white men for white men" he was stating, as 
Lincoln readily acknowledged, an indisputable historical 
fact. The Negro was a man and had the natural rights 
of a man ; but he could have no right to the special privi- 
leges of an American citizen because he was not and 
never had been an American citizen. He had not come 
to America as a citizen ; no one would ever have dreamed 
of bringing him or even admitting him if it had been 
supposed that he was to be a citizen. He was brought 
and admitted as a slave. The fact that the servile re- 
lationship was condemned by the democratic creed could 
not make the actual relationship of the two races some- 
thing wholly other than what it plainly was. A parallel 
might be found in the case of a man who, having entered 
into an intrigue with a woman, wholly animal and mer- 
cenary in its character, comes under the influence of a 
philosophy which condemns such a connection as sinful. 
He is bound to put an end to the connection. He is 
bound to act justly and humanely towards the woman. 



"THE BLACK TERROR" 281 

But no sane moralist would maintain that he was bound 
to marry the woman — that would treat the illicit rela- 
tionship as if it were a wholly different lawful relation- 
ship such as it was never intended to be and never could 
have been. 

Such was the plain sense and logic of the situation. 
To drive such sense into Sumner's lofty but wooden head 
would have been an impossible enterprise, but the mass 
of Northerners could almost certainly have been per- 
suaded to a rational policy if a sudden and tragic catas- 
trophe had not altered at a critical moment the whole 
complexion of public affairs. 

Lincoln made his last public speech on April n, 1865, 
mainly in defence of his Reconstruction policy as exem- 
plified in the test case of Louisiana. On the following 
Good Friday he summoned his last Cabinet, at which 
his ideas on the subject were still further developed. 
That Cabinet meeting has an additional interest as pre- 
senting us with one of the best authenticated of those 
curious happenings which we may attribute to coinci- 
dence or to something deeper, according to our predilec- 
tions. It is authenticated by the amplest testimony that 
Lincoln told his Cabinet that he expected that that day 
would bring some important piece of public news — he 
thought it might be the surrender of Johnston and the 
last of the Confederate armies — and that he gave as a 
reason the fact that he had had a certain dream, which 
had come to him on the night before Gettysburg and on 
the eve of almost every other decisive event in the history 
of the war. Certain it is that Johnston did not surrender 
that day, but before midnight an event of far graver 
and more fatal purport had changed the destiny of the 
nation. Abraham Lincoln was dead. 

A conspiracy against his life and that of the Northern 



282 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

leaders had been formed by a group of exasperated 
and fanatical Southerners who met at the house of a 
Mrs. Surratt in the neighbourhood of Washington. One 
of the conspirators was to kill Seward, who was confined 
to his bed by illness, and on whom an unsuccessful at- 
tempt was made. Another, it is believed, was instructed 
to remove Grant, but the General unexpectedly left 
Washington, and no direct threat was offered to him. The 
task of making away with the President was assigned to 
John Wilkes Booth, a dissolute and crack-brained actor. 
Lincoln and his wife were present that night at a gala 
performance of a popular English comedy called Our 
American Cousin. Booth obtained access to the Presi- 
dential box and shot his victim behind the ear, causing 
instant loss of consciousness, which was followed within 
a few hours by death. The assassin leapt from the box 
on to the stage shouting: "Sic semper Tyrannis!" and, 
though he broke his leg in the process, succeeded, pre- 
sumably by the aid of a confederate among the theatre 
officials, in getting away He was later hunted down, 
took refuge in a barn which was set on fire, and was shot 
in attempting to escape. 

The murder of Lincoln was the work of a handful of 
crazy fools. Already the South, in spite of its natural 
prejudices, was beginning to understand that he was its 
best friend. Yet on the South the retribution was to fall. 
It is curious to recall the words which Lincoln himself 
had used in repudiating, on behalf of the Republican 
Party, the folly of old John Brown, words which are 
curiously apposite to his own fate and its consequences. 

"That affair, in its philosophy," he had said, "corre- 
sponds to the many attempts related in history at the 
assassination of kings and emperors. An enthusiast 
broods over the oppression of a people till he fancies him- 



"THE BLACK TERROR" 283 

self commissioned by Heaven to liberate them. He ven- 
tures the attempt, which ends in little else than his own 
execution. Orsini's attempt on Louis Napoleon and John 
Brown's attempt at Harper's Ferry were, in their phi- 
losophy, precisely the same. The eagerness to cast blame 
on Old England in the one case and on New England 
in the other does not disprove the sameness of the two 
things." It may be added that the "philosophy" of Booth 
was also "precisely the same" as that of Orsini and 
Brown, and that the "eagerness to cast blame" on the 
conquered South was equally unjustifiable and equally in- 
evitable. 

The anger of the North was terrible, and was intensi- 
fied by the recollection of the late President's plea for 
lenity and a forgetfulness of the past. "This is their 
reply to magnanimity!" was the almost universal cry. 
The wild idea that the responsible heads of the Confed- 
eracy were privy to the deed found a wide credence which 
would have been impossible in cooler blood. The justi- 
fiable but unrestrained indignation which Booth's crime 
provoked must be counted as the first of the factors which 
made possible the tragic blunders of Reconstruction. 

Another factor was the personality of the new Presi- 
dent. Andrew Johnson occupied a position in some ways 
analogous to that of Tyler a generation earlier. He had 
been chosen Vice-President as a concession to the War 
Democrats and to the Unionists of the Border States 
whose support had been thought necessary to defeat Mc- 
Clellan. With the Northern Republicans who now com- 
posed the great majority of Congress he had no political 
affinity whatever. Yet at the beginning of his term of 
office, he was more popular with the Radicals than Lin- 
coln had ever been. He seemed to share to the full the 
violence of the popular mood. His declaration that as 



284 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

murder was a crime, so treason was a crime, and "must 
be made odious," was welcomed with enthusiasm by the 
very men who afterwards impeached him. Nor, when 
we blame these men for trafficking with perjurers and 
digging up tainted and worthless evidence for the purpose 
of sustaining against him the preposterous charge of 
complicity in the murder of his predecessor, must we for- 
get that he himself, without any evidence at all, had, 
under his own hand and seal, brought the same monstrous 
accusation against Jefferson Davis. Davis, when appre- 
hended, met the affront with a cutting reply. "There is 
one man at least who knows this accusation to be false 
— the man who makes it. Whatever else Andrew John- 
son knows, he knows that I preferred Lincoln to him." 
It was true. Between Johnson and the chiefs of the 
Confederacy there was a bitterness greater than could be 
found in the heart of any Northerner. To him they were 
the seducers who had caught his beloved South in a net 
of disloyalty and disaster. To them he was a traitor who 
had sold himself to the Yankee oppressor. A social quar- 
rel intensified the political one. Johnson, who had been 
a tailor by trade, was the one political representative of 
the "poor whites" of the South. He knew that the great 
slave-owning squires despised him, and he hated them 
in return. It was only when the issues cut deeper that 
it became apparent that, while he would gladly have 
hanged Jeff Davis and all his Cabinet on a sufficient 
number of sour apple trees (and perhaps he was the one 
man in the United States who really wanted to do so), 
he was none the less a Southerner to the backbone; it 
was only when the Negro Question was raised that the 
Northern men began to realize, what any Southerner 
or man acquainted with the South could have told them, 
that the attitude of the "poor white" towards the Negro 



"THE BLACK TERROR" 285 

was a thousand times more hostile than that of the slave- 
owner. 

Unfortunately, by the same token, the new President 
had not, as Lincoln would have had, the ear of the North. 

Had Lincoln lived he would have approached the task 
of persuading the North to support his policy with many 
advantages which his successor necessarily lacked. He 
would have had the full prestige of the undoubted Elect 
of the People — so important to an American President, 
especially in a conflict with Congress. He would have 
had the added prestige of the ruler under whose ad- 
ministration the Rebellion had been crushed and the 
Union successfully restored. But he would also have 
had an instinctive understanding of the temper of the 
Northern masses and a thorough knowledge of the grada- 
tions of opinion and temper among the Northern poli- 
ticians. 

Johnson had none of these qualifications, while his 
faults of temper were a serious hindrance to the success 
of his policy. He was perhaps the purest lover of his 
country among all the survivors of Lincoln : the fact that 
told so heavily against his success, that he had no party, 
that he broke with one political connection in opposing 
Secession and with another in opposing Congressional 
Reconstruction, is itself a sign of the integrity and con- 
sistency of his patriotism. Also he was on the right side. 
History, seeing how cruelly he was maligned and how 
abominably he was treated, owes him these acknowledg- 
ments. But he was not a prudent or a tactful man. Too 
much importance need not be attached to the charge of 
intemperate drinking, which is probably true but not 
particularly important. If Johnson had got drunk every 
night of his life he would only have done what some of 
the greatest and most successful statesmen in history 



286 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

had done before him. But there was an intemperance of 
character about the man which was more disastrous in 
its consequences than a few superfluous whiskies could 
have been. He was easily drawn into acrimonious per- 
sonal disputes, and when under their influence would 
push a quarrel to all lengths with men with whom it was 
most important, in the public interest, that he should 
work harmoniously. 

For the extremists, of whom Sumner was a type, were 
still a minority even among the Republican politicians; 
nor was Northern opinion, even after the murder of Lin- 
coln, yet prepared to support their policy. There did, 
however, exist in the minds of quite fair-minded North- 
erners, in and out of Congress, certain not entirely un- 
reasonable doubts, which it should have been the Presi- 
dent's task — as it would certainly have been Lincoln's — 
to remove by reason and persuasion. He seems to have 
failed to see that he had to do this; and certainly he al- 
together failed to do it. 

The fears of such men were twofold. They feared 
that the "rebel" States, if restored immediately to free- 
dom of action and to the full enjoyment of their old 
privileges, would use these advantages for the pur- 
pose of preparing a new secession at some more favour- 
able opportunity. And they feared that the emancipated 
Negro would not be safe under a Government which his 
old masters controlled. 

It may safely be said that both fears were groundless, 
though they were both fears which a reasonable man 
might quite intelligibly entertain. Naturally, the South 
was sore; no community likes having to admit defeat. 
Also, no doubt, the majority of Southerners would have 
refused to admit that they were in the wrong in the con- 
test which was now closed; indeed, it was by pressing 



"THE BLACK TERROR" 287 

this peculiarly tactless question that Sumner and his 
friends procured most of their evidence of the persistence 
of "disloyalty" in the South. On the other hand, two 
facts already enforced in these pages have to be remem- 
bered. The first is that the Confederacy was not in the 
full sense a nation. Its defenders felt their defeat as men 
feel the downfall of a political cause to which they are 
attached, not quite as men feel the conquest of their 
country by foreigners. The second is that from the first 
there had been many who, while admitting the right of 
secession — and therefore, by implication, the justice of 
the Southern cause — had yet doubted its expediency. It 
is surely not unnatural to suppose that the disastrous 
issue of the experiment had brought a great many round 
to this point of view. No doubt there was still a resi- 
due — perhaps a large residue — of quite impenitent "reb- 
els" who were prepared to renew the battle if they saw a 
good chance, but the conditions under which the new 
Southern Governments had come into existence offered 
sufficient security against such men controlling them. 
Irreconcilables of that type would not have taken the 
oath of allegiance, would not have repealed the Ordi- 
nances of Secession or repudiated the Confederate Debt, 
and, if they had no great objection to abolishing Slav- 
ery, would probably have made it a point of honour not 
to do it at Northern dictation. What those who were 
now asking for re-admission to their ancient rights in 
the Union had already done or were prepared to do was 
sufficient evidence that moderation and an accessible 
temper were predominant in their counsels. 

The other fear was even more groundless. There 
might in the South be a certain bitterness against the 
Northerner; there was none at all against the Negro. 
Why should there be ? During the late troubles the Ne- 



288 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

gro had deserved very well of the South. At a time 
when practically every male of the white population was 
in the fighting line, when a slave insurrection might 
have brought ruin and disaster on every Southern home, 
not a slave had risen. The great majority of the race 
had gone on working faithfully, though the ordinary 
means of coercion were almost, necessarily, in abeyance. 
Even when the Northern armies came among them, pro- 
claiming their emancipation, many of them continued to 
perform their ordinary duties and to protect the prop- 
erty and secrets of their masters. Years afterwards the 
late Dr. Booker Washington could boast that there was 
no known case of one of his race betraying a trust. All 
this was publicly acknowledged by leading Southerners 
and one-time supporters of Slavery like Alexander Ste- 
phens, who pressed the claims of the Negro to fair and 
even generous treatment at the hands of the Southern 
whites. It is certain that these in the main meant well 
of the black race. It is equally certain that, difficult as 
the problem was, they were more capable of dealing with 
it than were alien theorizers from the North, who had 
hardly seen a Negro save, perhaps, as a waiter at a hotel. 

It is a notable fact that the soldiers who conquered the 
South were at this time practically unanimous in support 
of a policy of reconciliation and confidence. Sherman, 
to whom Johnston surrendered a few days after Lin- 
coln's death, wished to offer terms for the surrender of 
all the Southern forces which would have guaranteed 
to the seceding States the full restoration of mutual 
self-government. Grant sent to the President a reassur- 
ing report as to the temper of the South which Sumner 
compared to the "whitewashing message of Franklin 
Pierce" in regard to Kansas. 

Yet it would be absurd to deny that the cleavage be- 



"THE BLACK TERROR" 289 

tween North and South inevitable after a prolonged Civil 
War required time to heal. One event might indeed 
have ended it almost at once, and that event almost oc- 
curred. A foreign menace threatening something valued 
by both sections would have done more than a dozen 
Acts of Congress or Amendments to the Constitution. 
There were many to whom this had always appeared the 
most hopeful remedy for the sectional trouble. Among 
them was Seward, who, having been Lincoln's Secretary 
of State, now held the same post under Johnson. While 
Secession was still little more than a threat he had pro- 
posed to Lincoln the deliberate fomentation of a dispute 
with some foreign power — he did not appear to mind 
which. It is thought by some that, after the war, he 
took up and pressed the Alabama claims with the same 
notion. That quarrel, however, would hardly have met 
the case. The ex-Confederates could not be expected to 
throw themselves with enthusiasm into a war with Eng- 
land to punish her for providing them with a navy. 
It was otherwise with the trouble which had been brew- 
ing in Mexico. 

Napoleon III. had taken advantage of the Civil War 
to violate in a very specific fashion the essential principle 
of the Monroe Doctrine. He had interfered in one of 
the innumerable Mexican revolutions and taken advan- 
tage of it to place on the throne an emperor of his own 
choice, Maximilian, a cadet of the Hapsburg family, and 
to support his nominee by French bayonets. Here was 
a challenge which the South was even more interested 
in taking up than the North, and, if it had been persisted 
in, it is quite thinkable that an army under the joint lead- 
ership of Grant and Lee and made up of those who had 
learnt to respect each other on a hundred fields from 
Bull Run to Spottsylvania might have erased all bitter 



290 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

memories by a common campaign on behalf of the liber- 
ties of the continent. But Louis Napoleon was no fool ; 
and in this matter he acted perhaps with more regard 
to prudence than to honour. He withdrew the French 
troops, leaving Maximilian to his fate, which he promptly 
met at the hands of his own subjects. 

The sectional quarrel remained unappeased, and the 
quarrel between the President and Congress began. Con- 
gress was not yet Radical, but it was already decidedly, 
though still respectfully, opposed to Johnson's policy. 
While only a few of its members had yet made up their 
minds as to what ought to be done about Reconstruc- 
tion, the great majority had a strong professional bias 
which made them feel that the doing or not doing of it 
should be in their hands and not in those of the Execu- 
tive. It was by taking advantage of this prevailing sen- 
timent that the Radicals, though still a minority, con- 
trived to get the leadership more and more into their 
own hands. 

Of Radicals Sumner was the spokesman most con- 
spicuous in the public eye. But not from him came 
either the driving force or the direction which ultimately 
gave them the control of national policy. 

Left to himself Sumner could never have imposed 
the iron oppression from which it took the South a life- 
and-death wrestle of ten years to shake itself free. At 
the worst he would have been capable of imposing a 
few paper pedantries, such as his foolish Civil Rights 
Bill, which would have been torn up before their ink 
was dry. The will and intelligence which dictated 
Reconstruction belonged to a very different man, a man 
entitled to a place, not with puzzle-headed pedants or 
coat-turning professionals, but with the great tyrants of 
history. 



"THE BLACK TERROR" 291 

Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania was in almost every 
respect the opposite of his ally, Charles Sumner of Mass- 
achusetts. Sumner, empty of most things, was espe- 
cially empty of humour. Stevens had abundance of 
humour of a somewhat fierce but very real kind. Some 
of his caustic strokes are as good as anything recorded 
of Talleyrand : notably his reply to an apologist of John- 
son who urged in the President's defence that he was a 
"selfmade man." "I am delighted to hear it," said Ste- 
vens grimly; "it relieves the Creator of a terrible re- 
sponsibility." With this rather savage wit went courage 
which could face the most enormous of tests; like Ra- 
belais, like Danton, he could jest with death when death 
was touching him on the shoulder. In public life he was 
not so much careless of what he considered conventions 
as defiantly happy in challenging them. It gave him 
keen delight to outrage at once the racial sentiments of 
the South and the Puritanism of the North by compelling 
the politicians whom he dominated and despised to pay 
public court to his mulatto mistress. 

The inspiring motive of this man was hatred of the 
South. It seems probable that this sentiment had its 
origin in a genuine and honourable detestation of 
Slavery. 

As a practising lawyer in Pennsylvania he had at an 
earlier period taken a prominent part in defending fugi- 
tive slaves. But by the time that he stood forward as 
the chief opponent of the Presidential policy of concilia- 
tion, Slavery had ceased to exist ; yet his passion against 
the former slave-owners seemed rather to increase than 
to diminish. I think it certain, though I cannot produce 
here all the evidence that appears to me to support such 
a conclusion, that it was the negative rather than the 
positive aspect of his policy that attracted him most. 



292 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

Sumner might dream of the wondrous future in store 
for the Negro race — of whose qualities and needs he 
knew literally nothing — under Bostonian tutelage. But 
I am sure that for Stevens the vision dearest to his heart 
was rather that of the proud Southern aristocracy com- 
pelled to plead for mercy on its knees at the tribunal 
of its hereditary bondsmen. 

Stevens was a great party leader. Not such a leader 
as Jefferson or Jackson had been, a man who sums up 
and expresses the will of masses of men. Nor yet such 
a leader as later times have accustomed us to, a man who 
by bribery or intrigue induces his fellow-professionals 
to support him. He was one of those who rule by per- 
sonal dominance. His courage has already been re- 
marked ; and he knew how much fearlessness can achieve 
in a profession where most men are peculiarly cowardly. 
It was he who forced the issue between the President 
and Congress and obtained at a stroke a sort of cap- 
taincy in the struggle by moving in the House of Rep- 
resentatives that the consideration of Reconstruction by 
Congress would precede any consideration of the Presi- 
dent's message asking for the admission of the represen- 
tatives of the reorganized States. 

By a combination of forceful bullying and skilful 
strategy Stevens compelled the House of Representatives 
to accept his leadership in this matter; the action of Con- 
gress on other questions during these early months of the 
contest shows how far it still was from accepting his 
policy. The plan of Reconstruction which the majority 
now favoured is to be found outlined in the Fourteenth 
Constitutional Amendment which, at about that time, 
it recommended for adoption by the South. 

The provisions of this amendment are threefold. 
One, for which a precedent had been afforded by the 



"THE BLACK TERROR" 293 

President's own action, declared that the public debt in- 
curred by the Federal Government should never be repu- 
diated, and also that no State should pay or accept re- 
sponsibility for any debt incurred for the purpose of 
waging war against the Federation. Another, probably 
unwise from the point of view of far-sighted statesman- 
ship but more or less in line with the President's policy, 
provided for the exclusion from office of all who, having 
sworn allegiance to the Constitution of the United States, 
had given aid to a rebellion against its Government. The 
third, which was really the crucial one, provided a settle- 
ment of the franchise question which cannot be regarded 
as extreme or unreasonable. It will be remembered that 
the original Constitutional Compromise had provided for 
the inclusion, in calculating the representation of a State, 
of all "free persons" and of three-fifths of the "other 
persons" — that is, of the slaves. By freeing the slaves 
the representation to which the South was entitled was 
automatically increased by the odd two-fifths of their 
number, and this seemed to Northerners unreasonable, 
unless the freedmen were at the same time enfranchised. 
Congress decided to recommend that the representation 
of the South should be greater or less according to the 
extent to which the Negro population were admitted to 
the franchise or excluded from it. This clause was re- 
cast more than once in order to satisfy a fantastic scru- 
ple of Sumner's concerning the indecency of mentioning 
the fact that some people were black and others white, 
a scruple which he continued to enforce with his custo- 
mary appeals to the Declaration of Independence, until 
even his ally (Stevens) lost all patience with him. But in 
itself it was not, perhaps, a bad solution of the difficulty. 
Had it been allowed to stand and work without further 
interference it is quite likely that many Southern States 



294 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

would have been induced by the prospect of larger rep- 
resentation to admit in course of time such Negroes as 
seemed capable of understanding the meaning of citizen- 
ship in the European sense. Such at any rate was the 
opinion of General Lee, as expressed in his evidence be- 
fore the Reconstruction Committee. 

The South was hostile to the proposed settlement 
mainly on account of the second provision. It resented 
the proposed exclusion of its leaders. The sentiment 
was an honourable and chivalrous one, and was well ex- 
pressed by Georgia in her protest against the detention 
of Jefferson Davis : "If he is guilty so are we." But 
the rejection of the Amendment by the Southern States 
had a bad effect in the North. It may be convenient here 
to remark that Davis was never tried. He was brought 
up and admitted to bail (which the incalculable Greeley 
found for him), and the case against him was not further 
pressed. In comparison with almost every other Govern- 
ment that has crushed an insurrection, the Government 
of the United States deserves high credit for its magna- 
nimity in dealing with the leaders of the Secession. Yet 
the course actually pursued, more in ignorance than in 
malice so far as the majority were concerned, probably 
caused more suffering and bitterness among the van- 
quished than a hundred executions. 

For the Radicals were more and more gaining control 
of Congress, now openly at war with the Executive. The 
President had been using his veto freely, and, as many 
even of his own supporters thought, imprudently. The 
Republicans were eager to obtain the two-thirds majority 
in both Houses necessary to carry measures over his 
veto, and to get it even the meticulous Sumner was ready 
to stoop to some pretty discreditable manoeuvres. The 
President had taken the field against Congress and made 



"THE BLACK TERROR" 295 

some rather violent stump speeches, which were gener- 
ally thought unworthy of the dignity of the Chief Mag- 
istracy. Meanwhile alleged "Southern outrages" against 
Negroes were vigorously exploited by the Radicals, whose 
propaganda was helped by a racial riot in New Orleans, 
the responsibility for which it is not easy to determine 
but the victims of which were mostly persons of colour. 
The net result was that the new Congress, elected in 
1866, not only gave the necessary two-thirds majority, 
but was more Radical in its complexion and more strict 
in control by the Republican machine than the old had 
been. 

The effect was soon apparent. A Reconstruction Bill 
was passed by the House and sent up to the Senate. It 
provided for the military government of the conquered 
States until they should be reorganized, but was silent 
in regard to the conditions of their re-admission. The 
Republican caucus met to consider amendments, and 
Sumner moved that in the new Constitution there should 
be no exclusion from voting on account of colour. This 
was carried against the strong protest of John Sherman, 
the brother of the general and a distinguished Republican 
Senator. But when the Senate met, even he submitted 
to the decision of the caucus, and the Amended Bill 
was carried by the normal Republican majority. John- 
son vetoed it, and it was carried by both Houses over 
his veto. The Radicals had now achieved their main ob- 
ject. Congress was committed to indiscriminate Negro 
Suffrage, and the President against it; the controversy 
was narrowed down to that issue. From that moment 
they had the game in their hands. 

The impeachment of Johnson may be regarded as an 
interlude. The main mover in the matter was Stevens. 
The main instrument Ben Butler — a man disgraced alike 



296 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

in war and peace, the vilest figure in the politics of that 
time. It was he who, when in command at New Orleans 
(after brave men had captured it), issued the infamous 
order which virtually threatened Southern women who 
showed disrespect for the Federal uniform with rape — 
an order which, to the honour of the Northern soldiers, 
was never carried out. He was recalled from his com- 
mand, but his great political "influence" saved him from 
the public disgrace which should have been his portion. 
Perhaps no man, however high in character, can mix 
long in the business of politics and keep his hands quite 
clean. The leniency with which Butler was treated on 
this occasion must always remain an almost solitary stain 
upon the memory of Abraham Lincoln. On the memory 
of Benjamin Butler stains hardly show. At a later stage 
of the war Butler showed such abject cowardice that 
Grant begged that if his political importance required 
that he should have some military command he should 
be placed somewhere where there was no fighting. This 
time Butler saved himself by blackmailing his command- 
ing officer. At the conclusion of peace the man went 
back to politics, a trade for which his temperament was 
better fitted; and it was he who was chosen as the chief 
impugner of the conduct and honour of Andrew John- 
son! 

The immediate cause of the Impeachment was the 
dismissal of Stanton, which Congress considered, wrong- 
ly as it would appear, a violation of an Act which, after 
the quarrel became an open one, they had framed for the 
express purpose of limiting his prerogative in this di- 
rection. In his quarrel with Stanton the President seems 
to have had a good case, but he was probably unwise to 
pursue it, and certainly unwise to allow it to involve him 
in a public quarrel with Grant, the one man whose pres- 



"THE BLACK TERROR" 297 

tige in the North might have saved the President's pol- 
icy. The quarrel threw Grant, who was already am- 
bitious of the Presidency, into the hands of the Republi- 
cans, and from that moment he ceased to count as a 
factor making for peace and conciliation. 

Johnson was acquitted, two or three honest Republi- 
can Senators declaring in his favour and so depriving 
the prosecution of the two-thirds majority. Each Sena- 
tor gave a separate opinion in writing. These docu- 
ments are of great historical interest; Sumner's espe- 
cially — which is of inordinate length and intensely char- 
acteristic — should be studied by any one who thinks that 
in these pages I have given an unfair idea of his char- 
acter. 

In the mean time, far more important work was being 
done in the establishment of Negro rule in the South. 
State after State was "reconstructed" under the terms 
of the Act which had been passed over the President's 
veto. In every case as many white men as possible were 
disfranchised on one pretext or another as "disloyal." 
In every case the whole Negro population was enfran- 
chised. Throughout practically the whole area of what 
had been the Confederate States the position of the races 
was reversed. 

So far, in discussing the Slavery Question and all the 
issues which arose out of it, I have left one factor out 
of account — the attitude of the slaves themselves. I 
have done so deliberately because up to the point which 
we have now reached that attitude had no effect on 
history. The slaves had no share in the Abolition move- 
ment or in the formation of the Republican Party. Even 
from John Brown's Raid they held aloof. The Presi- 
dent's proclamation which freed them, the Acts of Con- 
gress which now gave them supreme power throughout 



298 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

the South, were not of their making or inspiration. 
In politics the Negro was still an unknown factor. 

There can be little doubt that under Slavery the re- 
lations of the two races were for the most part kindly 
and free from rancour, that the master was generally 
humane and the slave faithful. Had it not been so, in- 
deed, the effect of the transfer of power to the f reed- 
men must have been much more horrible than it actually 
was. On the other hand, it is certain that when some 
Southern apologists said that the slaves did not want 
their freedom they were wrong. Dr. Booker Washing- 
ton, himself a slave till his sixth or seventh year, has 
given us a picture of the vague but very real long- 
ing at the back of their minds which bears the 
stamp of truth. It is confirmed by their strange and 
picturesque hymnology, in which the passionate desire 
to be "free," though generally apparently invoked in con- 
nection with a future life, is none the less indicative of 
their temper, and in their preoccupation with those parts 
of the Old Testament — the history of the Exodus, for 
instance — which appeared applicable to their own con- 
dition. Yet it is clear that they had but the vaguest idea 
of what "freedom" implied. Of what "citizenship" im- 
plied they had, of course, no idea at all. 

It is very far from my purpose to write contemptu- 
ously of the Negroes. There is something very beautiful 
about a love of freedom wholly independent of experi- 
ence and derived solely from the just instinct of the 
human soul as to what is its due. And if, as some South- 
erners said, the Negro understood by freedom mainly 
that he need not work, there was a truth behind his idea, 
for the right to be idle if and when you choose without 
reason given or permission sought is really what makes 
the essential difference between freedom and slavery. 



"THE BLACK TERROR" 299 

But it is quite another thing when we come to a com- 
plex national and historical product like American citi- 
zenship. Of all that great European past, without the 
memory of which the word "Republic" has no meaning, 
the Negro knows nothing: with it he had no link. A 
barbaric version or the more barbaric parts of this sup- 
plied him with the only record of human society he pos- 
sessed. 

Yet Negro Suffrage, though a monstrous anomaly, 
might have done comparatively little practical mischief 
if the Negro and his white neighbour had been left alone 
to find their respective levels. The Negro might have 
found a certain picturesque novelty in the amusement 
of voting; the white American might have continued 
to control the practical operation of Government. But 
it was no part of the policy of those now in power at 
Washington to leave either black or white alone. "Loyal" 
Governments were to be formed in the South; and to % 
this end political adventurers from the North — "carpet- 
baggers," as they were called — went down into the con- 
quered South to organize the Negro vote. A certain 
number of disreputable Southerners, known as "scally- 
wags," eagerly took a hand in the game for the sake of 
the spoils. So of course did the smarter and more am- 
bitious of the freedmen. And under the control of this 
ill-omened trinity of Carpet-bagger, Scallywag, and 
Negro Adventurer grew up a series of Governments the 
like of which the sun has hardly looked upon before or 
since. 

The Negro is hardly to be blamed for his share in the 
ghastly business. The whole machinery of politics was 
new to him, new and delightful as a toy, new and even 
more delightful as a means of personal enrichment. That 
it had or was intended to -have any other purpose prob- 



300 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

ably hardly crossed his mind. His point of view — a very 
natural one, after all — was well expressed by the aged 
freedman who was found chuckling over a pile of dollar 
bills, the reward of some corrupt vote, and, when ques- 
tioned, observed : "Wal, it's de fifth time Fs been bo't 
and sold, but, 'fo de Lord, it's de fust I ever got de 
money!" Under administration conducted in this spirit 
the whole South was given up to plunder. The looting 
went on persistently and on a scale almost unthinkable. 
The public debts reached amazing figures, while Negro 
legislators voted each other wads of public money as a 
kind of parlour game, amid peals of hearty African 
laughter. 

Meanwhile the Governments presided over by Negroes, 
or white courtiers of the Negro and defended by the 
bayonets of an armed black militia gave no protection to 
the persons or property of the whites. 

Daily insults were offered to what was now the subject 
race. The streets of the proud city of Charleston, where 
ten years before on that fatal November morning the 
Palmetto flag had been raised as the signal of Secession, 
were paraded by mobs of dusky f reedmen singing : "De 
bottom rail's on top now, and we's g'wine to keep it dar !" 
It says much for the essential kindliness of the African 
race that in the lawless condition of affairs there were 
no massacres and deliberate cruelties were rare. On the 
other hand, the animal nature of the Negro was strong, 
and outrages on white women became appallingly fre- 
quent and were perpetrated with complete impunity. 
Every white family had to live in something like a con- 
stant state of siege. 

It was not to be expected that ordinary men of Euro- 
pean origin would long bear such Government. And 
those on whom it was imposed were no ordinary men. 



"THE BLACK TERROR" 301 

They were men whose manhood had been tried by four 
such awful years of the Supreme Test, men such as had 
charged with Pickett up the bloody ridge at Gettysburg, 
and disputed with the soldiers of Grant every inch of 
tangled quagmire in the Wilderness. They found a 
remedy. 

Suddenly, as at a word, there appeared in every part 
of the downtrodden country bands of mysterious horse- 
men. They rode by night, wearing long white gar- 
ments with hoods that hid their faces, and to the terror- 
stricken Negroes who encountered them they declared 
themselves — not without symbolic truth — the ghosts of 
the great armies that had died in defence of the Confed- 
eracy. But superstitious terrors were not the only ones 
that they employed. 

The mighty secret society called the Ku-Klux-Klan 
was justified by the only thing that can justify secret 
societies — gross tyranny and the denial of plain human 
rights. The method they employed was the method so 
often employed by oppressed peoples and rarely without 
success — the method by which the Irish peasantry re- 
covered their land. It was to put fear into the heart of 
the oppressor. Prominent men, both black and white, 
who were identified with the evils which afflicted the 
State, were warned generally by a message signed 
"K.K.K." to make themselves scarce. If they neglected 
the warning they generally met a sudden and bloody 
end. At the same time the Klan unofficially tried and 
executed those criminals whom the official Government 
refused to suppress. These executions had under the cir- 
cumstances a clear moral justification. Unfortunately 
it had the effect of familiarizing the people with the 
irregular execution of Negroes, and so paved the way 
for those "lynchings" for which, since the proper author- 



302 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

ities are obviously able and willing to deal adequately 
with such crimes, no such defence can be set up. 

Both sides appealed to Grant, who had been elected 
President on the expiration of Johnson's term in 1868. 

Had he been still the Grant of Appomattox and of the 
healing message to which reference has already been 
made, no man would have been better fitted to mediate 
between the sections and to cover with his protection 
those who had surrendered to his*sword. But Grant was 
now a mere tool in the hands of the Republican politi- 
cians, and those politicians were determined that the atro- 
cious system should be maintained. They had not even 
the excuse of fanaticism. Stevens was dead ; he had lived 
just long enough to see his policy established, not long 
enough to see it imperilled. Sumner still lived, but he 
had quarrelled with Grant and lost much of his influ- 
ence. The men who surrounded the President cared 
little enough for the Negro. Their resolution to sup- 
port African rule in the South depended merely upon 
the calculation that so long as it endured the reign of 
the Republican party and consequently their own pro- 
fessional interests, were safe. A special Act of Congress 
was passed to put down the Ku-Klux-Klan, and the vic- 
torious army of the Union was again sent South to carry 
it into execution. But this time it found an enemy more 
invulnerable than Lee had been — invulnerable because 
invisible. The whole white population was in the con- 
spiracy and kept its secrets. The army met with no 
overt resistance with which it could deal, but the silent 
terrorism went on. The trade of "Carpet-bagger" be- 
came too dangerous. The ambitious Negro was made 
to feel that the price to be paid for his privileges was a 
high one. Silently State after State was wrested from 
Negro rule. 



"THE BLACK TERROR" 303 

Later the Ku-Klux-Klan — for such is ever the peril of 
secret societies and the great argument against them 
when not demanded by imperative necessity — began to 
abuse its power. Reputable people dropped out of it, 
and traitors were found in its ranks. About 1872 it dis- 
appeared. But its work was done. In the great major- 
ity of the Southern States, the voting power of the 
Negro was practically eliminated. Negroid Govern- 
ments survived in three only — South Carolina, Florida, 
and Louisiana. For these the end came four years later. 

The professional politicians of the North, whose mo- 
tive for supporting the indefensible regime established 
by the Reconstruction Act has already been noted, used, 
of course, the "atrocities" of the Ku-Klux-Klan as elec- 
tioneering material in the North. "Waving the bloody 
shirt," it was called. But the North was getting tired 
of it, and was beginning to see that the condition of 
things in the conquered States was a national disgrace. 
A Democratic House of Representatives had been chosen, 
and it looked as if the Democrats would carry the next 
Presidential election. In fact they did carry it. But 
two sets of returns were sent in by the three remaining 
Negro Governments, and these gave the Republicans an 
opportunity to contest the election. A Commission 
of Enquiry was demanded and appointed, but it was 
packed by the Republicans and showed itself as little 
scrupulous as the scoundrels who administered the "re- 
constructed" States. Affecting a sudden zeal for State 
Rights, it declared itself incompetent to inquire into the 
circumstances under which the returns were made. It 
accepted them on the word of the State authorities and 
declared Hayes, the Republican candidate, elected. 

It was a gross scandal, but it put an end to a grosser 
one. Some believe that there was a bargain whereby 



304 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

the election of Hayes should be acquiesced in peaceably 
on condition that the Negro Governments were not fur- 
ther supported. It is equally possible that Hayes felt 
his moral position too weak to continue a policy of 
oppression in the South. At any rate, that policy was 
not continued. Federal support was withdrawn from the 
remaining Negro Governments, and they fell without a 
blow. The second rebellion of the South had succeeded 
where the first had failed. Eleven years after Lee had 
surrendered to Grant at Appomattox, Grant's successor 
in the Presidency surrendered to the ghost of Lee. 

Negro rule was at an end. But the Negro remained, 
and the problem which his existence presented was, and 
is, to-day, further from solution than when Lincoln 
signed the Emancipation Proclamation. The signs of 
the Black Terror are still visible everywhere in the South. 
They are visible in the political solidarity of those South- 
ern States — and only of those States — which underwent 
the hideous ordeal, what American politicians call "the 
solid South." All white men, whatever their opinions, 
must vote together, lest by their division the Negro 
should again creep in and regain his supremacy. They 
are visible in those strict laws of segregation which show 
how much wider is the gulf between the races than it 
was under Slavery — when the children of the white 
slave-owner, in Lincoln's words, "romped freely with the 
little Negroes." They are visible above all in acts of 
unnatural cruelty committed from time to time against 
members of the dreaded race. These things are inex- 
plicable to those who do not know the story of the ordeal 
which the South endured, and cannot guess at the secret 
panic with which white men contemplate the thought of 
its return. 

Well might Jefferson tremble for his country. The 



"THE BLACK TERROR" 305 

bill which the first slave-traders ran up is not yet paid. 
Their dreadful legacy remains and may remain for gen- 
erations to come a baffling and tormenting problem to 
every American who has a better head than Sumner's 
and a better heart than Legree's. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE NEW PROBLEMS 

Most of us were familiar in our youth with a sort of 
game or problem which consisted in taking a number, 
effecting a series of additions, multiplications, subtrac- 
tions, etc., and finally "taking away the number you first 
thought of." Some such process might be taken as rep- 
resenting the later history of the Republican Party. 

That party was originally founded to resist the fur- 
ther extension of Slavery. That was at first its sole 
policy and objective. And when Slavery disappeared and 
the Anti-Slavery Societies dissolved themselves it might 
seem that the Republican Party should logically have 
done the same. But no political party can long exist, 
certainly none can long hold power, while reposing solely 
upon devotion to a single idea. For one thing, the mere 
requirements of what Lincoln called "national house- 
keeping" involve an accretion of policies apparently un- 
connected with its original doctrine. Thus the Repub- 
lican Party, relying at first wholly upon the votes of the 
industrial North, which was generally in favour of a 
high tariff, took over from the old Whig Party a Pro- 
tectionist tradition, though obviously there is no logical 
connection between Free Trade and Slavery. Also, in 
any organized party, especially where politics are nec- 
essarily a profession, there is an even more powerful 
factor working against the original purity of its creed 
in the immense mass of vested interests which it cre- 

306 



THE NEW PROBLEMS 307 

ates, especially when it is in power — men holding posi- 
tions under it, men hoping for a "career" through its 
triumphs, and the like. It may be taken as certain that 
no political body so constituted will ever voluntarily con- 
sent to dissolve itself, as a merely propagandist body 
may naturally do when its object is achieved. 

For some time, as has been seen, the Republicans 
continued to retain a certain link with their origin by 
appearing mainly as a pro-Negro and anti-Southern 
party, with "Southern outrages" as its electoral stock-in- 
trade and the maintenance of the odious non-American 
State Governments as its programme. The surrender 
of 1876 put an end even to this link. The "bloody shirt" 
disappeared, and with it the last rag of the old Republi- 
can garment. A formal protest against the use of "in- 
timidation" in the "solid South" continued to figure 
piously for some decades in the quadrennial platform of 
the party. At last even this was dropped, and its place 
was taken by the much more defensible demand that 
Southern representation should be so reduced as to cor- 
respond to the numbers actually suffered to vote. It is 
interesting to note that if the Republicans had not in- 
sisted on supplementing the Fourteenth Amendment by 
the Fifteenth, forbidding disqualification on grounds of 
race or colour, and consequently compelling the South 
to concede in theory the franchise of the blacks and 
then prevent its exercise instead of formally denying it 
them, this grievance would automatically have been met. 

What, then, remained to the Republican Party when 
the "number it first thought of" had been thus taken 
away ? The principal thing that remained was a connec- 
tion already established by its leading politicians with 
the industrial interests of the North-Eastern States and 
with the groups of wealthy men who, in the main, con- 



308 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

trolled and dealt in those interests. It became the party 
of industrial Capitalism as it was rapidly developing in 
the more capitalist and mercantile sections of the Union. 

The first effect of this was an appalling increase of 
political corruption. During Grant's second presidency 
an amazing number of very flagrant scandals were 
brought to light, of which the most notorious were the 
Erie Railway scandal, in which the rising Republican 
Congressional leader, Blaine, was implicated, and the 
Missouri Whisky Ring, by which the President himself 
was not unbesmirched. The cry for clean government 
became general, and had much to do with the election of 
a Democratic House of Representatives in 1874 and 
the return by a true majority vote — though defeated by 
a trick — of a Democratic President in 1876. Though 
the issue was somewhat overshadowed in 1880, when 
Garfield was returned mainly on the tariff issue — to be 
assassinated later by a disappointed place-hunter named 
Guiteau and succeeded by Arthur — it revived in full force 
in 1884 when the Republican candidate was James G. 
Blaine. 

Blaine was personally typical of the degeneration of the 
Republican Party after the close of the Civil War. He 
had plenty of brains, was a clever speaker and a cleverer 
intriguer. Principles he had none. Of course he had in 
his youth "waved the bloody shirt" vigorously enough, 
was even one of the last to wave it, but at the same time 
he had throughout his political life stood in with the 
great capitalist and financial interests of the North-East 
— and that not a little to his personal profit. The ex- 
posure of one politico-financial transaction of his — the 
Erie Railway affair — had cost him the Republican nomi- 
nation in 1876, in spite of Ingersoll's amazing piece of 
rhetoric delivered on his behalf, wherein the celebrated 



THE NEW PROBLEMS 309 

Secularist orator declared that "like an armed warrior, 
like a plumed knight, James G. Blaine strode down the 
floor of Congress and flung his shining lance, full and 
fair" — at those miscreants who objected to politicians 
using their public status for private profit. By 1884 it 
was hoped that the scandal had blown over and was 
forgotten. 

Fortunately, however, the traditions of the country 
were democratic. Democracy is no preservative against 
incidental corruption ; you will have that wherever poli- 
tics are a profession. But it is a very real preservative 
against the secrecy in which, in oligarchical countries 
like our own, such scandals can generally be buried. 
The Erie scandal met Blaine on every side. One of the 
most damning features of the business was a very com- 
promising letter of his own which ended with the fatal 
words : "Please burn this letter." As a result of its pub- 
lication, crowds of Democratic voters paraded the 
streets of several great American cities chanting monot- 
onously — 

"Burn, burn, burn this letter ! 

James G. Blaine. 
Please, please ! Burn this letter ! 

James G. Blaine. 
Oh ! Do ! Burn this letter ! 

James G. Blaine." 

The result was the complete success of the clean gov- 
ernment ticket, and the triumphant return of Grover 
Cleveland, the first Democrat to take the oath since the 
Civil War, and perhaps the strongest and best President 
since Lincoln. 

Meanwhile, the Republic had found itself threatened 
with another racial problem, which became acute at 
about the time when excitement on both sides regarding 



310 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

the Negro was subsiding. Scarcely had the expansion 
of the United States touched the Pacific, when its terri- 
tories encountered a wave of immigration from the thick- 
ly populated countries on the other side of that ocean. 
The population which now poured into California and 
Oregon was as alien in race and ideals as the Negro, and 
it was, perhaps, the more dangerous because, while the 
Negro, so far as he had not absorbed European culture, 
was a mere barbarian, these people had a very old and 
elaborate civilization of their own, a civilization pictur- 
esque and full of attraction when seen afar off, but ex- 
hibiting, at nearer view, many characteristics odious to 
the traditions, instincts and morals of Europe and white 
America. There was also the economic evil — really, of 
course, only an aspect of the conflict of types of civiliza- 
tion — arising from the fact that these immigrants, being 
used to a lower standard of life, undercut and cheap- 
ened the labour of the white man. 

Various Acts were passed by Congress from time to 
time for the restriction and exclusion of Chinese and 
other Oriental immigrants, and the trouble, though not 
even yet completely disposed of, was got under a mea- 
sure of control. Sumner lived long enough to oppose the 
earlier of these very sensible laws, and, needless to say, 
trotted out the Declaration of Independence, though in 
this case the application was even more absurd than in 
that of the Negro. The Negro, at any rate, was already 
resident in America, and had been brought there in the 
first instance without his own consent; and this fact, 
though it did not make him a citizen, did create a moral 
responsibility towards him on the part of the American 
Commonwealth. Towards the Chinaman it had no re- 
sponsibility whatever. Doubtless he had, as a man, his 
natural rights to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happi- 



THE NEW PROBLEMS 311 

ness" — in China. But whoever said anything so ab- 
surd as that it was one of the natural rights of man 
to live in America? It was, however, less to the in- 
creased absurdity of his argument than to the less fa- 
vourable bias of his audience that Sumner owed his fail- 
ure to change the course of legislation in this instance. 
An argument only one degree less absurd had done well 
enough as a reason for the enslavement and profanation 
of the South a year or two before. But there was no 
great party hoping to perpetuate its power by the aid of 
the Chinese, nor was there a defeated and unpopular 
section to be punished for its "treason" by being made 
over to Mongolian masters. Indeed, Congress, while 
rejecting Sumner's argument, made a concession to his 
monomania on the subject of Negroes, and a clause 
was inserted in the Act whereby no person "of Afri- 
can descent" should be excluded — with the curious result 
that to this day, while a yellow face is a bar to the pros- 
pective immigrant, a black face is, theoretically at any 
rate, actually a passport. 

The exclusion of the Chinese does but mark the be- 
ginning of a very important change in the attitude of 
the Republic towards immigration. Up to this time, in 
spite of the apparent exception of the Know-Nothing 
movement, of which the motive seems to have been pre- 
dominantly sectarian, it had been at once the interest 
and the pride of America to encourage immigration on 
the largest possible scale without troubling about its 
source or character: her interest because her undevel- 
oped resources were immense and apparently inexhaust- 
ible, and what was mainly needed was human labour to 
exploit them; her pride, because she boasted, and with 
great justice, that her democratic creed was a force 
strong enough to turn any man who accepted citizen- 



312 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

ship, whatever his origin, into an American. But in 
connection with the general claim, which experience has, 
on the whole, justified, there are two important reser- 
vations. One is that such a conversion is only possible 
if the American idea — that is, the doctrine set forth by 
Jefferson — when once propounded awakens an adequate 
response from the man whom it is hoped to assimilate. 
This can generally be predicted of Europeans, since the 
idea is present in the root of their own civilization : it 
derives from Rome. But it can hardly be expected of 
peoples of a wholly alien tradition from which, the Ro- 
man Law and the Gospel of Rousseau are alike remote. 
This consideration lies at the root of the exception of 
the Negro, the exception of the Mongol, and may one 
day produce the exception of the Jew. 

The other reservation is this : that if the immigration 
of diverse peoples proceeds at too rapid a rate, it may be 
impossible for absorption to keep pace with it. Nay, 
absorption may be grievously hindered by it. This has 
been shown with great force and clearness by Mr. Zang- 
will under his excellent image of the "Melting Pot." 
Anyone even casually visiting New York, for instance, 
can see on every side the great masses of unmelted for- 
eign material and their continual reinforcement from 
overseas, probably delaying continually the process of 
fusion — and New York is typical in this of other great 
American cities. 

A new tendency to limit immigration and to seek 
some test of its quality has been a marked feature of 
the last quarter of a century. The principle is almost 
certainly sound; the right to act on it, to anyone who 
accepts the doctrine of national self-government, un- 
questionable. Whether the test ultimately imposed by a 
recent Act passed by Congress over President Wilson's 



THE NEW PROBLEMS 313 

veto, that of literacy, is a wise one, is another question. 
Its tendency may well be to exclude great masses of the 
peasantry of the Old World, men admirably fitted to de- 
velop by their industry the resources of America, whose 
children at least could easily be taught to read and write 
the American language and would probably become ex- 
cellent American citizens. On the other hand, it does not 
exclude the criminal, or at any rate the most dangerous 
type of criminal. It does not exclude the submerged 
population of great European cities, the exploitation of 
whose cheap labour is a menace to the American work- 
man's standard of life. And it does not, generally 
speaking, exclude the Jew. 

The problem of the Jew exists in America as else- 
where^ — perhaps more formidably than elsewhere. This, 
of course, is not because Jews, as such, are worse than 
other people : only idiots are Anti-Semites in that sense. 
It arises from the fact that America, more than any 
other nation, lives by its power of absorption, and the 
Jew has, ever since the Roman Empire, been found a 
singularly unabsorbable person. He has an intense na- 
tionalism of his own that transcends and indeed ignores 
frontiers, but to the nationalism of European peoples 
he is often consciously and almost always subconsciously 
hostile. In various ways he tends to act as a solvent of 
such nationalism. Cosmopolitan finance is one example 
of such a tendency. Another, more morally sympathetic 
but not much less dangerous to nationalism in such a 
country as America, is cosmopolitan revolutionary ideal- 
ism. The Socialist and Anarchist movements of Amer- 
ica, divided of course in philosophy, but much more akin 
in temper than in European countries, are almost wholly 
Jewish, both in origin and leadership. For this reason, 
since America's entrance into the Great War, these par- 



314 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

ties, in contrast to most of the European Socialist par- 
ties, have shown themselves violently anti-national and 
what we now call "Bolshevist." 

But organized Socialism is, in America, almost a 
negligible force ; not so organized labour. In no country- 
has the Trade Union movement exercised more power, 
and in no country has it fought with bolder weapons. In 
the early struggles between the organized workers and 
the great capitalists, violence, and even murder was 
freely resorted to on both sides, for if the word must be 
applied to the vengeance often wreaked by the Labour 
Unions on servants of the employer and on traitors to 
the organization, the same word must be used with a 
severer moral implication of the shooting down of work- 
men at the orders of men like Carnegie, not even by the 
authorized police force or militia of the State, but by pri- 
vately hired assassinators such as the notorious Pinker- 
ton used to supply. 

The labour movement in America is not generally 
Collective. Collectivism is alien to the American tem- 
per and ideal, which looks rather to a community of free 
men controlling, through personal ownership, their own 
industry. The demand of American labour has been 
rather for the sharp and efficient punishment of such 
crimes against property as are involved in conspiracies 
to create a monopoly in some product and the use of 
great wealth to "squeeze out" the small competitor. Such 
demands found emphatic expression in the appearance 
in the 'nineties of a new party calling itself "Populist" 
and formed by a combination between the organized 
workmen and the farmers of the West, who felt them- 
selves more and more throttled by the tentacles of the 
new commercial monopolies which were becoming known 
by the name of "Trusts." In the elections of 1892, when 



THE NEW PROBLEMS 315 

Cleveland was returned for a second time after an in- 
terval of Republican rule under Harrison, the Populists 
showed unexpected strength and carried several West- 
ern States. In 1896 Democrats and Populists combined 
to nominate William Jennings Bryan as their candidate, 
with a programme the main plank of which was the 
free coinage of silver, which, it was thought, would 
weaken the hold of the moneyed interests of the East 
upon the industries of the Continent. The Eastern States, 
however, voted solid for the gold standard, and were 
joined, in the main, by those Southern States which had 
not been "reconstructed" and were consequently not in- 
cluded politically in the "Solid South." The West, too, 
though mainly Bryanite, was not unanimous, and Mc- 
Kinley, the Republican candidate, was returned. The 
Democratic defeat, however, gave some indication of the 
tendencies which were to produce the Democratic vic- 
tory of 1916, when the West, with the aid of the "Solid 
South," returned a President whom the East had all but 
unanimously rejected. 

McKinley's first term of office saw the outbreak and 
victorious prosecution of a war with Spain, arising 
partly out of American sympathy with an insurrection 
which had broken out in Cuba, and partly out of the be- 
lief, now pretty conclusively shown to have been un- 
founded, that the American warship Maine, which was 
blown up in a Spanish harbour, had been so destroyed 
at the secret instigation of the Spanish authorities. Its 
most important result was to leave, at its conclusion, both 
Cuba and the Philippine Islands at the disposal of the 
United States. This practically synchronized with the 
highest point reached in this country, just before the 
Boer War, by that wave of national feeling called "Im- 
perialism." America, for a time, seemed to catch its 



818 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

infection or share its inspiration! as wc may prefer to put 

it. I '.hi the tendency was not a permanent one. The 
American Constitution is indeed expressly Imilt for ex- 
pansion, bul only where the territory acquired can be 
thoroughly Americanized and ultimately divided into 
sell governing States on the American pattern. To hold 
permanently subject posses'. inns which cannot be so 
treated is alien to its general spirit and intention. Cuba 
was soon abandoned, and though the Philippines were 
retained, the difficulties encountered in their subjection 
and the moral anomaly involved in being obliged to wage 

a war of conquest a:\iinsl those whom you have pro- 
fessed to liberate, acted as a distinct check upon the en- 
thusiasm for such experiments. 

After the conclusion of the Spanish war, McKinlcy 
was elected for a second term; almost immediately aftcr- 
wards h«' was murdered l»y an Anarchist named CzolgOSZ, 

sometimes desci ibed as a " I '<>lc," but presumably an East 
European Jew. The effect was to produce a third ex- 
ample i.f the unwisdom though in this case the country 

wis distinctly the gainer of the habit of using the Vice- 
Presidency merely as an electioneering bait. Theodore 

Roosevell had been Chosen as candidate for that office 
solely to Catch what we should here call the "khaki" sen- 
timent, he and his "roiighridcrs" having played a distin- 
guished and picturesque part in the Cuban campaign. 
But ii soon appeared that the new President had ideas of 

his own which were hy no means identical with those of 
the Party Bosses, lie sought to re-create the moral pres- 
tige of the Republican Tarty by identifying it with the 
National idea- with which its traditions as the War 
Tarty in the battle for the Union made its identification 
seem n<»t inappropriate— with a spirited foreign policy 
and with the aspiration for expansion and world-power. 



THE NEW PROBLEMS 317 

But he also sought to sever its damaging connection with 
those sordid and unpopular plutocratic combinations 
which the nation as a whole justly hated. Of great en- 
ergy and attractive personality, and gifted with a strong 
sense of the picturesque in politics, President Roosevelt 
opened a vigorous campaign against those Trusts which 
had for so long backed and largely controlled his party. 
The Republican Bosses were angry and dismayed, but 
they dared not risk an open breach with a popular and 
powerful President backed by the whole nation irre- 
spective of party. So complete was his victory that not 
only did he enjoy something like a national triumph when 
submitting himself for re-election in 1904, but in 1908 
was virtually able to nominate his successor. 

Mr. Taft, however, though so nominated and pro- 
fessing to carry on the Rooseveltian policy, did not carry 
it on to the satisfaction of its originator. The ex-Presi- 
dent roundly accused his successor of suffering the party 
to slip back again into the pocket of the Trusts, and in 
1 912 offered himself once more to the Republican Party 
as a rival to his successor. The Party Convention at 
San Franciseo^fnose Taft by a narrow majority. Some- 
thing may be allowed for the undoubtedly prevalent sen- 
timent against a breach of the Washingtonian tradition 
of a two-terms limit; but the main factor was the hostil- 
ity of the Bosses and the Trusts behind them, and the 
weapon they used was their control of the Negro "pocket 
boroughs" of the Southern States, which were repre- 
sented in the Convention in proportion to their population 
of those States, though practically no Republican votes 
were cast there. Colonel Roosevelt challenged the de- 
cision of the Convention, and organized an independent 
party of his own under the title of "Progressive," com- 
posed partly of the defeated section of the Republicans 



318 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

and partly of all those who for one reason or another 
were dissatisfied with existing parties. In the contest 
which followed he justified his position by polling far 
more votes than his Republican rival. But the division 
in the Republican Party permitted the return of the 
Democratic candidate, Dr. Woodrow Wilson. 

The new President was a remarkable man in more 
ways than one. By birth a Southerner, he had early mi- 
grated to New Jersey. He had a distinguished academic 
career behind him, and had written the best history of 
his own country at present obtainable. He had also 
held high office in his State, and his term had been sig- 
nalized by the vigour with which he had made war on 
corruption in the public service. During his term of of- 
fice he was to exhibit another set of qualities, the posses- 
sion of which had perhaps been less suspected : an in- 
stinct for the trend of the national will not unlike that 
of Jackson, and a far-seeing patience and persistence 
under misrepresentation and abuse that recalls Lincoln. 

For Mr. Wilson had been in office but a little over a 
year when Prussia, using Austria as an instrument and 
Serbia as an excuse, forced an aggressive war on the 
whole of Europe. The sympathies of most Americans 
were with the Western Allies, especially with France, for 
which country the United States had always felt a sort 
of spiritual cousinship. England was, as she had always 
been, less trusted, but in this instance, especially when 
Prussia opened the war with a criminal attack upon the 
little neutral nation of Belgium, it was generally con- 
ceded that she was in the right. Dissentients there were, 
especially among the large German or German-descended 
population of the Middle West, and the Prussian Govern- 
ment spent money like water to further a German propa- 
ganda in the States. But the mass of American opinion 



THE NEW PROBLEMS 319 

was decidedly favourable of the cause of those who 
were at war with the German Empire. Yet it was at 
that time equally decided and much more unanimous 
against American intervention in the European quarrel. 
The real nature of this attitude was not grasped in 
England, and the resultant misunderstanding led to criti- 
cisms and recriminations which everyone now regrets. 
The fact is that the American* had very good reason for 
disliking the idea of being drawn into the awful whirl- 
pool in which Europe seemed to be perishing. It was 
not cowardice that held her back : her sons had done 
enough during the four terrible years of civil conflict 
in which her whole manhood was involved to repel that 
charge for ever. Rather was it a realistic memory of 
what such war means that made the new America eager 
to keep the peace as long as it might. There was ob- 
servable, it is true, a certain amount of rather silly Paci- 
fist sentiment, especially in those circles which the Rus- 
sians speak of as "intelligenzia," and Americans as "high 
brow." It went, as it usually goes, though the logical 
connection is not obvious, with teetotalism and similar 
fads. All these fads were peculiarly rampant in the 
United States in the period immediately preceding the 
war, when half the States went "dry," and some cities 
passed what seems to us quite lunatic laws — prohibiting 
cigarette-smoking and creating a special female police 
force of "flirt-catchers." The whole thing is part, one 
may suppose, of the deliquescence of the Puritan tradi- 
tion in morals, and will probably not endure. So far 
as such doctrinaire Pacifism is concerned, it seems to 
have dissolved at the first sound of an American shot. 
But the instinct which made the great body of sensible 
and patriotic Americans, especially in the West, resolved 
to keep out of the war, so long as their own interests 



320 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

and honour were not threatened, was of a much more 
solid and respectable kind. Undoubtedly most Ameri- 
cans thought that the Allies were in the right; but if every 
nation intervened in every war where it thought one or 
other side in the right, every war must become universal. 
The Republic was not pledged, like this country, to en- 
force respect for Belgian neutrality; she was not, like 
England, directly threatened by the Prussian menace. 
Indirectly threatened she was, for a German victory 
would certainly have been followed by an attempt to 
realize well-understood German ambitions in South 
America. But most Americans were against meeting 
trouble halfway. 

Such was the temper of the nation. The President 
carefully conformed to it, while at the same time guiding 
and enlightening it. For nearly two years he kept his 
country out of the war. The task was no easy one. He 
was assailed at home at once by the German propa- 
gandists, who wanted him, in defiance of International 
Law, to forbid the sale of arms and munitions to the 
Allies, and by Colonel Roosevelt, who wished America 
to declare herself definitely on the Allied side. More- 
over, Prussia could understand no argument but force, 
and took every sign of the pacific disposition of the Gov- 
ernment at Washington as an indication of cowardice 
or incapacity to fight. But he was excellently served in 
Berlin by Mr. Gerard, and he held to his course. The 
Lusitania was sunk and many American citizens were 
drowned as a part of the Prussian campaign of indis- 
criminate murder on the high seas; and the volume of 
feeling in favour of intervention increased. But the 
President still resisted the pressure put upon him, as 
Lincoln had so long resisted the pressure of those who 
wished him to use his power to declare the slaves free. 



THE NEW PROBLEMS 321 

He succeeded in obtaining from Germany some mitiga- 
tion of her piratical policy, and with that he was for a 
time content. He probably knew then, as Mr. Gerard 
certainly did, that war must come. But he also knew that 
if he struck too early he would divide the nation. He 
waited till the current of opinion had time to develop, 
carefully though unobtrusively directing it in such a 
fashion as to prepare it for eventualities. So well did he 
succeed that when in the spring of 191 7 Prussia pro- 
claimed a revival of her policy of unmitigated murder 
directed not only against belligerents but avowedly 
against neutrals also, he felt the full tide of the general 
will below him. And when at last he declared war it 
was with a united America at his back. 

Such is, in brief, the diplomatic history of the inter- 
vention of the United States in the Great War. Yet 
there is another angle from which it can be viewed, 
whereby it seems not only inevitable but strangely sym- 
bolic. The same century that saw across the Atlantic 
the birth of the young Republic, saw in the very centre 
of Europe the rise of another new Power. Remote as 
the two were, and unlikely as it must have seemed at 
the time that they could ever cross each other's paths, 
they were in a strange fashion at once parallel and anti- 
podean. Neither has grown in the ordinary complex 
yet unconscious fashion of nations. Both were, in a 
sense, artificial products. Both were founded on a creed. 
And the creeds were exactly and mathematically opposed. 
According to the creed of Thomas Jefferson, all men 
were endowed by their Creator with equal rights. Ac- 
cording to the creed of Frederick Hohenzollern, there 
was no Creator, and no one possessed any rights save 
the right of the strongest. Through more than a cen- 
tury the history of the two nations is the development 



322 A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

of the two ideas. It would have seemed unnatural if 
the great Atheist State, in its final bid for the imposition 
of its creed on all nations, had not found Jefferson's Re- 
public among its enemies. That anomaly was not to be. 
That flag which, decked only with thirteen stars repre- 
senting the original revolted colonies, had first waved 
over Washington's raw levies, which, as the cluster grew, 
had disputed on equal terms with the Cross of St. George 
its ancient lordship of the sea, which Jackson had kept 
flying over New Orleans, which Scott and Taylor had 
carried triumphantly to Monterey, which on a memor- 
able afternoon had been lowered over Sumter, and on a 
yet more memorable morning raised once again over 
Richmond, which now bore its full complement of forty- 
eight stars, symbolizing great and free States stretch- 
ing from ocean to ocean, appeared for the first time on 
a European battlefield, and received there as its new 
baptism of fire a salute from all the arsenals of Hell 



